Trump finance chair was sued for Madoff fraud profit

Donald Trump’s new finance chair – a former head of Goldman Sachs’ mortgage department – was sued in 2010 for the millions his mother made in an investment with Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernie Madoff

Donald Trump’s new national finance chairman – a former head of the mortgage department for Goldman Sachs – was sued in 2010 for the return of $3.2 million in fake profit from an account with Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernie Madoff.

Steven Mnuchin was named Trump’s fiancé chairman Thursday, according to Bloomberg. He was linked to Madoff through his late mother, who invested about $2 million with the financier and saw her investment grow to $5.2 million.

After their mother died in 2005, Mnuchin and his brother withdrew the money from her Madoff account. In 2008, Madoff was arrested. And in 2010, trustee Irving Picard, who filed multiple lawsuits seeking restitution for the victims of Madoff’s $17.5 billion fraud, sued for $3.2 million of the Mnuchins’ $5.2 million, saying that it was fake profit.

Neither Mnuchin or his mother were accused of knowing about Madoff’s scam, but Picard sued all investors who came out “net winners,” Bloomberg reported. So far, Picard has recovered more than $11 billion for victims of the Ponzi scheme.

Picard dropped the suit against Mnuchin when a federal appeals court forced him to forfeit suits against people who made withdrawals more than two years before the Madoff house of cards collapsed.

Mnuchin declined to comment on the final recipient of the $3.2 million profit withdrawn from the Madoff account, Bloomberg reported.