Vienna-based Sonja Kohn was slapped with a $19.6 billion suit by Irving Picard - the New York lawyer trying to recover the billions Madoff stole from investors.
"For more than 20 years, Kohn masterminded a vast illegal scheme to exploit her privileged relationship with Madoff to feed over $9.1 billion of other people's money into his Ponzi scheme," says the suit, which names the Medici Bank founder and two dozen accomplices.
Sonja Kohn Sued
An Orthodox Jew who wears a trademark red wig, Kohn enriched herself and her family "on the backs of Madoff's victims," the suit says.
Kohn, 62, met Madoff in 1985, when she and her husband lived in Monsey in Rockland County. Under federal racketeering law, damages triple to $58.8 billion if Picard wins the suit, filed in Manhattan federal bankruptcy court.
It is the biggest claim Picard has filed. And it comes amid a blizzard of suits - filed just hours before a midnight filing deadline - against the big banks, hedge funds and high rollers that profited from dealings with Madoff.
Sonja Kohn Sued
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