NEW YORK (AP) – Items that used to belong to fallen financier Bernard Madoff and his wife, Ruth, fetched several times their estimated values at auction for a total of about $1 million, twice as much as the auctioneers had hoped for.

Madoff's blue satin New York Mets baseball jacket with his surname stitched on the back, valued at up to $720, sold for $14,500 at Saturday's auction. The jacket carries its own special meaning: Team owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz were among the victims of Madoff's fraud.

Madoff's Hofstra College ring, estimated at $360, went for $6,000.

Excitement filled a Manhattan hotel ballroom as people participating in the auction, run by Pflugerville, Texas-based Gaston & Sheehan, bid for items they could afford without being as rich as Madoff was.

Charlie Blumenkehl raised his hand for a set of Madoff's golf irons, clinching them for $3,600, against a $350-to-$400 estimate.

“I just wanted Bernie's name on the clubs,” the New Jersey fund manager said with a laugh, adding, ``but I don't want his vibes to be transmitted – my fund is doing better than his.”

Two pairs of Ruth Madoff's diamond dangle earrings sold for $70,000 each, against a pre-sale estimate of no more than $9,800 and $21,400. But the most highly prized item in the sale, one of Bernard Madoff's 17 Rolex watches, fetched only $65,000, paid by an unknown buyer. The watch was valued between $75,000 and $85,000.

The auction was organized by the U.S. Marshals Service, which seized the couple's properties – a penthouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side and houses in Montauk, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida.

Inside the homes were some of the items on the block Saturday, ordered forfeited as part of Madoff's sentencing after he pleaded guilty in a multibillion-dollar fraud that burned thousands of investors. Proceeds from the auction will be divided among his victims.

The lots ranged from dishes, pens and stationery to decoy ducks, furs and the Rolex, dubbed the Prisoner Watch.

The Swiss chronograph watch was modeled on those made for World War II Allied airmen imprisoned in Germany, who used them to time prison patrols and plan a possible escape. This one graced the wrist of Madoff, now a 71-year-old inmate in a North Carolina prison, serving a 150-year sentence for defrauding investors for decades.

The sale sums up the Madoffs in a nutshell, auction observer Lark Mason said.

“They wanted to show off their lifestyle with big houses, yachts, jewelry,” he said. “They didn't buy things they were passionate about – they just wanted more and more.”

The nearly 200 lots were an assembly line of conspicuous consumption, fueled by proceeds from the tens of billions of dollars that Madoff's pyramid scheme cost investors. Some investors were wiped out financially while the Madoffs thrived.

Ruth Madoff has not been charged with any crime. But she agreed to give up her possessions in return for a promise that federal prosecutors wouldn't pursue $2.5 million not tied to her husband's fraud. The scandal forced her to move out of the $7 million penthouse where she and her husband lived.

At the auction, a lineup of other Rolex and Cartier models filled a giant screen, selling for up to $30,000 each. But the couple's tastes could also be downright common; seven Swatch watches went for $850, against an estimate of $100 to $150.

There was little of great artistic value in the Madoff homes, Mason said.

“They weren't interested in great art,” he said.

The auction house charged no premiums but was paid an undisclosed fee. Buyers, some of whom bid by phone from all over the world, were not identified.

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Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-CS-11-15-09 0115EST

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials turned over the two-volume Bible to two Austrian emissaries during a repatriation ceremony at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan.

Published in Venice in 1516-17, the Bible once was part of the well-known medieval manuscripts collection of S.H. Halberstam, officials said. In 1908, it was donated to the Vienna Jewish community library.

In 1938, during the annexation of Austria, Nazi soldiers confiscated the Bible in a seizure of the Jewish community's library, and the Bible later wound up in Berlin.

It was illegally imported into the United States in March, authorities said.

In June, New York auction house Kestenbaum & Co., which specializes in rare books, offered the Bible for sale, according to immigration officials and federal prosecutors. An investigation by immigration officials concluded that it belonged to the library.

The auctioneer had been unaware of its history and withdrew it from the sale.

The Bible includes an Aramaic summary and a series of commentaries by medieval rabbinic figures from the 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th centuries.

It was given to Ariel Muzicant, president of Vienna's Jewish community, and Ernst-Peter Brezovsky, Austrian consul-general.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-ES-11-09-09 1532EST

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Federal agents are investigating whether a Rhode Island woman broke the law by importing a painting taken from a Jewish art dealer and auctioned by the Nazis.

Maria-Luise Bissonnette said Thursday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents searched her Providence apartment last week. She said the agents were investigating whether she illegally brought a painting into the country, an allegation she denies.

An ICE spokeswoman did not return a call seeking comment.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling last year forcing Bissonnette to surrender a painting to the estate of late Jewish art dealer Max Stern. In 1937, Germany's Nazi government forcibly auctioned off Stern's paintings, including one purchased by Bissonnette's stepfather. His stepdaughter inherited it.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-ES-11-05-09 1110EST

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (ACNI) – Concert promoter David Gest, who was a longtime friend of the late Michael Jackson, has filed a $200,000 federal lawsuit against Julien’s Auctions of West Hollywood, California. Gest claims that Julien’s, which specializes in high-profile sales of A-list celebrities’ personal possessions and memorabilia, profited from the use of his name in an auction of Michael Jackson articles Julien’s held on June 26-27 in Las Vegas.

Gest says auction-catalog descriptions stated he was a previous owner of 21 lots of property included in the sale and that this information is incorrect. In a published report, Gest is quoted as saying: “Julien’s Auctions deceived buyers by letting them believe I owned many of these items when I did not. Every individual who purchased items I never owned was falsely duped into thinking they were part of my collection.” Gest went on to describe the inclusion of his name in the catalog as “an act of fraud.”

In an exclusive interview with Auction Central News, Julien’s owner, Darren Julien, said he followed the correct auction-industry protocol in including Gest’s name within the provenance [record of former ownership]. “It is our obligation to convey provenance in the most accurate and complete way possible to our bidders,” Julien said. “We put the provenance exactly as it was given to us by the consignor, who has had a long association with David Gest, both in business and as a friend. We certainly did not include David Gest’s name because we thought it would in any way enhance the value of the articles being offered. Only David Gest thinks his name is the reason the items brought as much money as they did.”

Collectors paid fantastic prices for the articles in Julien’s June 26-27 sale. A signed Jackson 5 album estimated at $400-$600 made $33,750; and an artwork of Mickey Mouse and Pluto that Jackson had painted as a boy exceeded its high estimate 16 times over, selling for $25,000.

Julien said his main obligation to bidders pursuing Jackson items in the sale was ensuring authenticity of the articles offered, i.e., that they had actually been the property of Michael Jackson at some point in the past. On that basis, Julien has filed his own federal suit asking that Gest’s claim be dismissed.

“These items came from a credible person, a collector who had bought them from a New York auction company in 2003,” Julien said. “The items were consigned to us with previous auction provenance, which included the name ‘David Gest.’ Over the past decade, David Gest has been the largest source of items from the life and career of Michael Jackson. All but maybe a few of the Jackson articles in the sale had previously been part of Gest’s collection, and those few exceptions came from Michael Jackson’s publicist. What we were guaranteeing to our bidders was that all the items had formerly been the property of Michael Jackson. The bidders were buying the items because they belonged to Michael Jackson, not because they once passed through David Gest’s hands…I would never be able to sell anything of David Gest’s solely because he owned it; it would not be collectible. He tried to auction some of his stuff in London in 2008. It was one of the most dismal auctions that ever took place.”

Julien said he believes Gest has filed the lawsuit against his auction house “to try to get money from us. He has no talent and has done nothing noteworthy other than being a previous friend to a celebrity…David Gest and lawsuits are as common as bread and water. If you Google the words ‘David Gest lawsuit,’ you’ll get 10 pages of returns. He even sued [ex-wife] Liza Minelli, who’s one of the nicest people in the world. She’s a legend, like her mom [Judy Garland].”

Julien said his company holds itself to “the highest possible standard and would never jeopardize the relationships we have with celebrities who trust us with their collections. We’ve worked with Cher, Barbra Streisand, Madonna, U2, the Beatles…We would never do anything without an estate’s permission, nor would we sell anything a star didn’t want sold.”

Julien’s Auctions worked with Michael Jackson and his representatives for more than six months in 2008, preparing for an auction of Jackson’s personal collection and contents of Neverland Ranch that was to have taken place on April 22-25 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. The event never transpired because, according to sources close to the auction negotiations, Jackson himself had a change of heart about selling his possessions. On March 4, 2009, Jackson’s production company filed suit against Julien’s Auctions to prevent the auction from going forward, in spite of the existence of a signed contract entitling Julien’s to conduct such an event. The case eventually was settled out of court without acrimony and to the satisfaction of both sides involved.

With the approval of Michael Jackson’s management, Julien’s subsequently mounted an April 14-25, 2009 exhibit that included many of the Jackson costumes and other articles that would have been auctioned, had the April sale taken place.

Darren Julien says that since the untimely death of Michael Jackson on June 25, 2009, he has remained close with the pop star’s family and estate. Their cooperation was instrumental, Julien said, to the creation and success of the current “Music Icons” touring exhibit, which includes the trademark glove Jackson wore when he introduced the moonwalk to the world during the Motown 25 TV special in 1983.

Music Icons, which is drawing record crowds, was recently on view in Santiago, Chile, and at the Newbridge Museum of Style Icons near Dublin, Ireland. Its next stops will be Tokyo and New York.

__________________

Note: Auction Central News made repeated attempts to contact David Gest’s attorney, Edward M. Bearman, to offer his client the right of reply to Darren Julien’s comments. The calls had not been returned as of the date of this article’s publication. Auction Central News would welcome the opportunity to speak with Mr. Gest or Mr. Bearman at any time and leaves that option open to them.

Update: On Nov. 9, 2009, Attorney Edward Bearman contacted Auction Central News and advised us to forward our questions for David Gest to Mark Collins, who is Gest's publicist in London. On Nov. 10, 2009, Mark Collins e-mailed the following response to Auction Central News: "Mr. Gest will not be answering these questions or commenting at this stage. He will be doing an exclusive interview with an international publication where these questions along with everything else will be duly answered..."

Copyright 2009 Auction Central News International. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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