Madoff - Apartment, $62 Mln Unrelated To Fraud

Authorities have said Madoff had hundreds of millions of dollars in checks ready to mail out to family and associates.

Lawyers for accused swindler Bernard Madoff say a Manhattan apartment and $62 million in accounts held by his wife are unrelated to the investment manager's purported fraud, according to court documents.

A judge in U.S. District Court in Manhattan partially lifted a freeze on assets of Madoff and his wife on Monday so he can cooperate with a trustee winding down his firm to recover money for customers.

"Whereas while Madoff and his counsel do not object to the entry of the Relief Order... they maintain that some of the assets covered by the Relief Order are unrelated to the alleged Madoff fraud and only Ruth Madoff has a beneficial ownership interest in these assets," said the order signed by Judge Louis Stanton.

It mentioned the New York City apartment where Madoff is under house arrest following his Dec. 11 arrest, about $45 million in municipal bonds in an account held by Ruth Madoff at Cohmad Securities Corporation, and $17 million in an account held by her at Wachovia Bank.

During the nearly three months since Madoff's arrest on allegations that he ran a $50 billion global fraud over many years, authorities have said he had hundreds of millions of dollars in checks ready to mail out to family and associates.

On Feb. 11, a Massachusetts state regulator said Ruth Madoff withdrew more than $15 million from an account at Cohmad Securities in the days before her husband's arrest.

Madoff, a once-respected trader and investment manager, is under house arrest and 24-hour surveillance. He is the only person charged in the purported Ponzi scheme, in which early investors are paid with the money of new clients.