Lawyer Gets Threats, Wins Praise Over Madoff

Some legal observers have questioned whether Sorkin might have potential conflicts of interest in the Madoff case.

Lawyer Ira Lee Sorkin receives death threats for defending one of America's most vilified people, accused swindler Bernard Madoff.

But he also wins praise from colleagues in the white-collar litigation world for keeping Madoff out of jail, so far.

Known as "Ike," the gregarious, bespectacled 65-year-old with a shock of short white hair has other clients in cases stemming from the financial markets' meltdown. But Madoff is the biggest purported fraud in Wall Street history.

"It is a challenge. The email, voicemail, anti-Semitism, the death threats, it's an interesting time," Sorkin said on Wednesday, the day a court hearing was postponed over potential conflicts of interest for him.

"The nasty emails have been coming in since I took on the case," said Sorkin, who has practiced law for 41 years. He has been a securities enforcement regulator, for the federal agency criticized for not going after Madoff sooner; a prosecutor, for the office that now has; and a defense counsel.

Despite the "challenges," he said he would continue to represent Madoff, whom he has known since the 1980s.

Sorkin's name appeared on a Madoff firm mailing list filed in court, but he says he has never invested with Madoff, whose purported worldwide scheme goes back decades.

Madoff, a once-respected trader, investment adviser and former chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange, preyed on the Jewish elite of New York, Florida and parts of Europe and Latin America, investors and lawyers said.

Sorkin is a member of the board of governors of Hebrew University in Jerusalem and chairman of the board for American Friends of Hebrew University. They were not on the mailing list of former Madoff clients.

In an agreement with U.S. prosecutors, Madoff is out on $10 million bail, under house arrest in his luxury Manhattan apartment with around-the-clock surveillance.

Despite a series of government challenges in court, Sorkin convinced judges to keep Madoff at home, making his arguments in a strong voice that carried clearly across the large courtroom.

"People in Madoff's position, who are universally despised, often have only one champion in the whole wide world -- their lawyer -- and that's Sorkin role and he's fulfilling it well," said Michael Shapiro, a partner at Wall Street law firm Carter, Ledyard and Milburn LLP, one of Sorkin's former firms.

Typically, white-collar crime defendants are freed on bail before trial but Madoff's bail caused a public outcry.

Late in February, Sorkin also argued for bail for another client, a hedge fund manager by the name of James Nicholson accused of defrauding hundreds of millions of investor money. The matter is pending.

Some legal observers have questioned whether Sorkin might have potential conflicts of interest in the Madoff case.

U.S. prosecutors have asked a judge in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to hear Madoff tell the court that he knows that his lawyer represented two accountants in a 1992 case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The accountants invested with Madoff.

For Madoff himself, the next court date is March 13, a loose deadline for the government to indict him or reach a plea deal. Prosecutors have twice been granted a 30-day extension of the deadline to continue investigating Madoff's complex web.

Madoff was arrested and charged on Dec. 11 after authorities said he confessed to running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme. In a Ponzi scheme early investors are redeemed with the money of new clients.

A partner at Dickstein Shapiro LLP, Sorkin served as a prosecutor in the 1970s in the Southern District of New York -- the same office that brought the criminal charge against Madoff.

In the mid-1980s, he was head of the New York office of the Securities and Exchange Commission -- the regulator criticized in Congress for not catching Madoff years ago.

Other lawyers working with Sorkin on the case are Daniel Horwitz, Nicole De Bello and Mauro Wolfe.