Air Bernie: Welcome Aboard!
It's not all bad news for the folks defrauded by Bernie Madoff. In addition to his handful of homes in Manhattan, Montauk, and Palm Beach, it's likely Madoff's 50 percent stake in this $24 million Embaer Legacy jet will eventually be distributed to the people he cheated as part of his elaborate scheme. The plane, which is based at Long Island's Republic Airport and is just a year old, was purchased by Madoff and real estate developer Edward Blumenfeld, who revealed last week he'd been "invested heavily" in Madoff and had teamed up with him to build a shopping complex in East Harlem. The two, it turns out, also went on family vacations together, which probably explains why they got together to buy the plane. (It's one of two planes that Madoff used on a regular basis: He's also a Netjets customer and is listed as a fractional owner of a Cessna 750 alongside hedge fund billionaire Phil Falcone and Richard Kinder, the former president of Enron.) It's the plane that Madoff co-owns with Blumenthal, though, that you can take for a spin, if you're interested. A company called Talon Air is still leasing Air Bernie, so if you're looking to take 12 friends on a trip—or you just want to see what Bernie used to traipse around the world and rope in new investors—here you go.