New York oil tycoon lost billions with Enron, invested in Bernie Madoff and struck out with FTX: report

The New York oil baron, who lost billions in the collapse of Enron and who also invested tens of millions in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, was also hurt by the collapse of the Sam Bankman-Freed FTX cryptocurrency exchange, according to the report.

Robert Belfer, 87, whose family has made several charitable donations to institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Harvard and Yeshiva University, is listed in court documents as a shareholder in FTX, according to the Financial Times.

The documents show that Belfer Investment Partners and Lime Partners LLC, two firms linked to the family business, owned shares in FTX and its US subsidiary FTX US.

According to court documents cited by the Financial Times, the two companies held a combined stake of $34.5 million as of early last year when they participated in an equity fundraising round.

The Belfers declined to comment publicly on the matter.

The Belfer family joins other wealthy celebrities such as New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft; superstar quarterback Tom Brady; Brady’s ex-wife is a supermodel, Gisele Bündchen; other.

Brady owns 1.1 million shares of common stock in private company FTX, while Bündchen owns 686,000 shares, according to the documents. It is unclear how much money they paid for their shares.

Brady, Bündchen, and other prominent endorsers have featured in several lawsuits filed by investors who accused them of promoting a “large Ponzi scheme.”

Bankman-Fried, a former tycoon whose net worth was once estimated at more than $26 billion, has been charged by the federal government with fraud and money laundering. He remains under house arrest after being released on $250 million bail.

Bankman-Fried, 30, pleaded not guilty. He denies wrongdoing.

Robert Belfer is the Polish son of Arthur Belfer, a multi-millionaire oilman who fled his native Poland after the invasion of Nazi Germany.

Arthur Belfer came to the United States and founded Belco Petroleum Corp., which grew into a Fortune 500 company. His son eventually became president of the firm.

In the mid-1980s, Belco Petroleum merged with InterNorth, Inc., an Omaha-based energy company that eventually merged with Houston Natural Gas to become Enron.

The Belfer family became one of Enron’s largest shareholders, holding approximately $2 billion in shares.

But in the early 2000s, Enron, once worth $70 billion, filed for bankruptcy after it became known that company executives used illegal accounting practices to hide their huge debts from investors and creditors.

Ironically, John Ray III, the attorney appointed by the bankruptcy court to head FTX after Bankman-Freed stepped down, was also named the man to clean up Enron’s mess.

Ray said in November that the FTX scandal was worse than the Enron scandal.

“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate control and such a complete lack of reliable financial information as here,” Ray said.

The Belfers also invested millions in Madoff, a former Wall Street executive who died in prison after being convicted of running the biggest fraud in history.

After the fall of Enron, the Belfer family withdrew over $28 million from Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

According to court documents, Irving Pickard, the trustee in charge of liquidating Madoff’s assets and recovering the victims’ funds, filed a lawsuit against the Belfers in an attempt to recover their proceeds.

It is unclear how the lawsuit was settled.