Court ruling means trouble for Mets owners

NEW YORK, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- A federal appellate court decision in the case of Bernie Madoff is being seen as a significant setback for the owners of the financially troubled New York Mets.

An appeals court in Manhattan ruled the team's owners, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, could have to turn over at least $300 million to the trustee for the victims of Madoff's multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme fraud, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The trustee sued the owners last year, saying they had been willfully blind to evidence Madoff might have been a fraud and had been "net winners" over their decades of investing with Madoff.

The 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals said the trustee's decision on how to recoup and redistribute the money that had moved through Madoff's scheme was appropriate

The trustee, Irving H. Picard, had decided that investors who had taken more money out of their accounts with Madoff than they had put in had to return their "net winnings."

The ruling is a setback for Wilpon and Katz, who have already had to sell a portion of the Mets in an attempt to stem the team's financial losses.