This Bernie Madoff scandal just won’t go away for the New York Mets.  Mets owners are now preparing for a trial as their club is preparing for the 2012 campaign.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff ruled that Mets principal owner Fred Wilpon, his family, businesses and charities must pay as much as $83.3 million to the trustee trying to recover funds to net losers in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. He also ruled that the sides will go to trial March 19th over an additional $303 million that trustee Irving Picard is seeking.

The Wilpons defense is saying that since they had $500 million invested with Madoff at the time his scheme was discovered by authorities, they actually were losers — despite withdrawing more money than they had deposited with Madoff.

Nearly 5,000 investors were deceived in the fraud by Madoff, the former NASDAQ chairman, who told them their $20 billion investment had grown to $68 billion by November 2008. Weeks later, he revealed his fraud, confessing that only several hundred million dollars were left.

Madoff is serving a 150-year prison sentence in North Carolina for his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.

The Wilpons deny knowingly participating in a Ponzi scheme.  I say, “yeah right”!

I’m sorry but the Wilpon’s knew what was going on with Bernie Madoff. 

Why? Well, let’s just think for a minute.  Before Madoff was busted back in 2008, the Mets had one of the highest payrolls in baseball (it was actually in the top 5).  Since Madoff has been in jail, they’ve had to trim almost $70 million dollars worth of payroll.  The Mets couldn’t afford Jose Reyes and haven’t gone after a big-name free agent in years.  Don’t you find the timing to be a bit odd?  Wake up people – the money the Mets made from the Madoff ponzi scheme was helping to run the team and it had been for years.

Think about it – if the balance in their account was approximately $500 million on the day Madoff was caught, and they had been investing for decades and had taken out some $300,000,000 in “fictitious profits”, that means they invested and took out somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 million to $1 billion over the years.

It was a don’t ask, don’t tell policy – in other words, the Mets heard no evil and saw no evil because Madoff’s charade was running their Major League Baseball team.

For all you hot dog eaters out there (not me) – it’s like eating a hot dog; you don’t want to know what’s inside but since it tastes so good, you eat it anyway. 

If you knew you could rob a bank and not get caught, would you still rob the bank?  In my opinion, the Mets owners were essentially robbing a bank – it just happened to be the bank was those investors caught up in the Madoff Ponzi scheme.