• Fashion tycoon Kenneth Cole has managed to sell his penthouse at 101 West 79th Street, albeit for substantially less than the original asking price. The four-bedroom apartment, which was priced at $18.95 million and reduced to $16.95 million in December 2008, has sold for $12.5 million to an entity called Fundo Azul LLC. So who's behind this Fundo Azul? No clue, although if you know more, feel free to drop us a line and let us know. [Cityfile]
• Hotel owner Jeffrey Carlstead has listed the one-bedroom at 15 CPW that he bought for $2.54 million in August. It's now $4.6 million. [Cityfile, Corcoran]
• No 740 Park apartment for you! Both banker Peter Huang's apartment and Courtney Sale Ross' 32-room duplex have been taken off the market. [MGross]
• Ivan Lendl has gone into contract to sell his mansion in Goshen, Conn. The 43,000-square-foot home had been listed at $25 million. [NYP]
• Disgraced financier Alberto Vilar recently listed his 11-room co-op at 860 United Nations Plaza for $5.5 million. But it may be too late. It's scheduled to be sold at auction on March 11th. [Page Six, BHS]

For most of the rich, the object of charity is to make one's name known. Alberto Vilar, a founder of a once-high-flying tech-stocks fund who stiffed New York's Metropolitan Opera on a $25 million pledge, has succeeded all too well. But his name is in court documents rather than the opera halls and college buildings he had hoped for. A jury found Vilar and his partner, Gary Tanaka, guilty of stealing $20 million from customers of Amerindo Investment Advisors, in a series of frauds dating back to the dotcom bust. He could face 20 years in prison.Vilar, among other things, was charged with $5 million from heiress Lily Cates, the mother of actress Phoebe Cates, and using some of the proceeds to make a donation to Vilar's alma maters. That was one of the few contributions he actually carried out; he had promised some $200 million to nonprofits over the years, including the Met's $25 million. As he failed to come up with the money, his nameplates came down from the institutions he'd promised to sponsor. Plácido Domingo is among the artists he left shortchanged. (A performing-arts center in the ski-resort town of Beaver Creek, Colo., still carries Vilar's name, though.) What brought Vilar down ultimately, was the dotcom bust. He rode big bets on Amazon.com, eBay, and Yahoo in the '90s to make billions of dollars, and his net worth peaked at $950 million. After the Nasdaq crashed in 2000, though, investors say Vilar promised to put their money in safe interest-bearing accounts — and instead, kept investing it in hopeless tech stocks. All the while, he kept giving away money to charities that he didn't have. Which makes me wonder: Who is the Alberto Vilar of today, and how long will it take to uncover his misdeeds? The quest may be fruitless, if only because there are too many to count, let alone prosecute. The craze for mortgage-backed securities has made Vilars of almost every fund manager out there. A promise of safety which turned out to be false; that is the theme of the meltdown that has touched every market on the planet. The main difference: Vilar was clever enough, the jury that convicted him must have believed, to know he was fooling his clients. His successors were merely fooling themselves.

Alberto Vilar, the wealthy financier, co-founder of Amerindo Investment Advisors, and mega-donor to the Metropolitan Opera, was convicted of all 12 counts in his securities fraud trial this morning. "Mr. Vilar, 67, blinked when the first guilty verdict was pronounced by the foreman in a United States District courtroom but remain stone-faced." [NYT]

If you cashed in during the boom times by taking shortcuts—or you made a fortune during the credit crisis by spreading misinformation—and you're wondering what your life will be like in a few years after the government investigation is complete and you're facing an indictment as long as your arm, you'd be well advised to take a look at the article in the Times today about Alberto Vilar, the disgraced financier who once presided over Amerindo Investment Advisors. Once worth $1 billion and one of the largest donors to the Metropolitan Opera (the Met later ripped out the plaque with Vilar's name on it after he was indicted), Vilar hasn't found much peace in the three years since he was first accused of fraud.