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Several Area Residents On Madoff Victims List

Several area residents may be among the more famous victims of the multi-billion-dollar Madoff ponzi scheme.

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By RICHARD MULLINS

rmullins@tampatrib.com

Published: February 6, 2009

Updated: 02/06/2009 07:52 am

TAMPA - Joel Toro of Tampa thought he was set for life. Then the phone rang last month.

"It was my cousin from New York and he said 'Guess what - I'm broke, you're broke,'" Toro recalls. Toro was one of thousands of investors wiped out by the multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme authorities say Bernard Madoff committed. "I and many of my relatives all invested our life savings with them."

Kevin Bacon may be among the more famous victims of the multibillion-dollar Madoff scheme, but some local investors also appeared on a list of victims released Thursday by a federal court. At least a dozen victims live in Tampa.

Toro, 66, was one.

Toro originally invested in Madoff because an uncle worked at the Madoff firm during the 1970s - one reason much of his family tree became clients. Over the years, Toro invested big chunks of his pay from managing what is now the Stadium Toyota car dealership. Later, he ran a car wholesaling business, and kept pouring money into Madoff's accounts.

"It was an amazing investment for all these years. I supported my mother, made a lot of money off it," he said. Year after year, his investment earned nine, 10, 16 percent. "Then it just blew up."

Now everything he was living off of and his retirement savings are gone.

He's already been through a round of treatment for depression and is looking to sell his home in Beach Park. Now he's trying to find how he'll live off Social Security. He's hired a lawyer, who thinks he might get a few pennies on the dollar. Maybe $100,000, if they're lucky.

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigations have already called, wondering about his family links to the firm.

Many of the other Tampa victims were listed as trusts, meaning they were investment pools likely intended for a person's descendants. But others appeared to be individual investors caught up in the collapse of the Madoff investment organization.

If there's a silver lining, Toro said, "my cancer is now in remission, so whatever happens, I have that."

Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919.

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