Madoff’s Rolex sells for $67,500

Imprisoned Wall Street conman Bernard Madoff’s luxury watches, piano and other ill-gotten gains sold for high prices at auction, along with his more mundane possessions including socks.

A Steinway grand piano went for $42,000 in the New York auction of goods seized by the US Marshall’s Service after Madoff’s life imprisonment last year.

The former money man’s craze for wrist watches was apparently shared at the auction, where proceeds will go toward compensating victims of the decades-long pyramid, or Ponzi fraud.

A Rolex moonphase watch sold for $67,500, while a Rolex Cosmograph Daytona fetched $40,000 and two vintage Patek Philippe watches went for $56,000 and $37,500.

Other items among the mountain of luxury goods impounded from Madoff’s Manhattan and Long Island homes – which have already been auctioned off, along with boats and other Wall Street trophies – were jewels, furniture and artwork.

A Tuscan landscape by the 19th century American artist Henry Twachtman sold for $53,000, while an oil painting by Frederick Carl Frieseke, another American impressionist, sold for $47,500. Unlike the last auction of the Mr Madoffs’ lavish collections, this sale stood out for items proving that billionaires and record-breaking crooks are also just like ordinary folk.

Mr Madoff ran a complex pyramid or Ponzi scheme for years in which he used new investors’ capital to pay fake profits to existing investors.

He pleaded guilty last year after the scheme imploded and was sentenced to 150 years. The 72-year-old, who rose from a humble start as a lifeguard in New York to become one of Wall Street’s most trusted and powerful money managers, is incarcerated in North Carolina.