Carl J Shapiro, the man who lost a fortune with Bernard Madoff

This really sucks more for some people more than others. Carl Shapiro is one of those people who have really been hit hard the the fraud of Bernard Madoff. My question about Madoff though is why is he not in jail right now? What is really bad for Shapiro though is that he is not exactly a spring chicken anymore. He can't go out and find work at his age. Plus the money that he worked long and hard for is gone because he trusted someone he shouldn't have. We all have made that mistake, but it will hit Shapiro in the pocketbook at the worst time possible.

Jenny Booth

The individual who seems to have lost most in the collapse of Bernard Madoff's $50 billion fraudulent financial empire is a 95-year-old Boston philanthropist, Carl Shapiro.

Mr Shapiro has been a personal friend of Mr Madoff for more than 50 years, and had entrusted much of his fortune and nearly half of the assets of his charitable foundation to the shamed New York investor. More than half a billion dollars is missing, according to a family spokesman.

The revelation that the money has disappeared into what Mr Madoff has described as a "giant Ponzi (pyramid selling) scheme" is a personal betrayal for Mr Shapiro, who was so close to the financier that he has frequently been described as one of his "go-to" men, credited with setting up meetings with other potential Madoff investors in the blue-blooded golf clubs in New York and Florida to which both men belonged.

Introductions were said to have been made in the hallowed and exclusive premises of the $250,000-a-year Palm Beach Country Club in Florida, the venerable Old Oaks golf club in wealthy Westchester County, New York, in the Atlantic golf club in the Hamptons, and at the Boca Rio golf club in Boca Raton, Florida, an area filled with immensely rich retired people.

Such was former Nasdaq chairman Mr Madoff's reputation as a safe pair of hands with other people's fortunes, would-be investors were said to spend years trying to get onto the client list of Bernard L Madoff Securities, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on membership fees for the clubs he frequented just for the chance of meeting him.

The minimum starting investment was a million dollars, and Mr Madoff's mystique only grew because he turned down many of the people so eager to invest with him.

There is no suggestion that Mr Shapiro had any inkling of the alleged financial irregularities that Mr Madoff admitted to his two sons last week, leading to his arrest on fraud charges last Thursday. According to the Boston Globe, the Carl & Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation has lost about $145 million.

Carey O'Donnell, a spokeswoman for the Shapiros, has told the Wall St Journal that the couple had at least an additional $400 million of their personal fortune invested with Mr Madoff. Analysts say that it could represent up to half their wealth.

"All I can say is that this is an awful, awful time for us," Ruth Shapiro told a reporter from The New York Times over the weekend.

Mr Shapiro made his fortune making women's clothes under the brand Kay Windsor Inc, which he set up in 1939. When he sold the business to Vanity Fair Corp in 1971 it was one of the largest clothing manufacturers in America. Introduced to Mr Madoff by Robert Jaffe, his son-in-law, Mr Shapiro was among the original investors in Mr Madoff's company when it launched in 1960.

Mr Shapiro and his wife set up their charitable foundation the following year, in 1961, and over the decades have been big donors to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Brandeis University in Boston which Mr Madoff also supported through his own charitable foundation, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Brigham and Women's Hospital where the Carl J. and Ruth Shapiro Cardiovascular Center opened this spring.

Building work is due to start next week at Boston Medical Center on the Shapiro Ambulatory Care Center, a nine-floor, $135 million facility paid for in part with $15 million from the family foundation, according to the New York Times.

In March, the foundation pledged $27 million to DanaFarber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center in Boston. Brandeis has received $22 million from the Shapiros to build the campus centre building.

Last night Mr Shapiro issued a statement stressing his own innocence of the fraud, saying that he had been "stunned and saddened to learn about the allegations" against his old friend. He pointed out that his fortune had taken a personal hit, saying that the crash would have "an impact on our family as well as our family foundation", though he did not say how much he had lost.

He went on: "Though I have had a personal relationship with Mr Madoff for more than 50 years, any decisions I or my family foundation made to invest with him were based on his apparent business acumen, sense of integrity and commitment to sound investing principles."

Mr Shapiro also moved to distance himself from Mr Madoff's business affairs, insisting: "I want to be abundantly clear that at no time did I ever formally introduce individuals as potential investors with Mr Madoff. In fact, we agreed when our friendship began that I would not introduce him to potential clients. I wanted to avoid putting him in the awkward position of saying 'no' to a friend of mine."

He added that his charitable trust would survive and honour all of its existing commitments. "My family and I are firmly committed to the ideals and mission of this foundation and fully expect that it will continue to grow over time."

By contrast, the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, which financed trips for Jewish youth to Israel, said last night that all the money that supported its programmes was invested with Mr Madoff.

"The money needed to fund the programmes of the Lappin Foundation is gone," the Salem, Massachusetts-based foundation said on its website, adding that all its seven staff had been let go.

A hedge fund group owned by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., of Springfield, was today reported to have lost all of its clients' money - more than $3 billion - in the Madoff crash.

Other losers include film director Steven Spielberg 's charity, the Wunderkinder Foundation; Fred Wilpon, the owner of the New York Mets baseball team; Mortimer Zuckerman, a 70-year-old real estate magnate who also owns the American tabloid newspaper the New York Daily News and is number 188 on the Forbes rich list, with an estimate wealth of $2.4bn; and the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, a charity founded by the Holocaust survivor and writer after he was awarded the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize.

"It is devastating to think that so many charities, individuals, and institutions that had put their trust in Mr Madoff have had their lives so negatively impacted," said Mr Shapiro.