Stanley Chais, a former billionaire who fell victim to Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, has written a letter accusing Goldman Sachs (GS) of failing to comply with agreements to release funds.

FOX Business has obtained a copy of the letter, which can be viewed below.

Bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard has frozen Chais’s Goldman account, although there is no court order to do so.  Chais is unable to pay for medical expenses and living expenses. 

Picard has agreed to unfreeze funds, but to date no order has been issued to release money and Mr. Chais, who is terminally ill, is caught in limbo.

Picard is suing Chais for $1.1 billion, claiming that Chais and his family withdrew far more money from the Madoff firm than it deposited.  Chais’s first letter to the Bankruptcy court pleaded with Judge Lifland to “provide some relief from this injustice and respectfully request that the Court lift this bank so I may have the services of counsel when I come before you.” 

Chais has been unable to obtain money from the Goldman Sachs account to pay his medical bills, living expenses or legal bills which are now mounting.  In the new letter, Chais said:

”Perhaps the most egregious tactic employed by the trustee against me was to intimidate Goldman Sachs into freezing my account, which, apart from the relatively modest funds at my bank, represents my only source of liquid capital. In fact, Goldman Sachs initially refused even to give me information about my account, which I need in order to make important decisions about those investments.”   

See our Bernard Madoff page for the latest videos and stories on the man behind the massive scheme.

Chais has been granted a one-time allowance from the account to cover some bills, but calls it a very limited amount but not nearly enough to cover his future legal expenses.   The letter also responds to the accusation from Picard that Chais unfairly profited from his business relationship with Madoff as noted when he writes:

“I presume, in addition to me and my wife, they are referring to my eight grandchildren, ages nine to sixteen, for whom I set up trusts in their infancy and who lost everything to the Madoff Ponzi scheme.  Or perhaps they are referring to my children for whom I set up trusts when they were very young and in any case, have never had anything to do with the management of their trusts.  They, too, lost everything as a result of their investment with Madoff.”

“Mr. Picard knows that the bulk of the money that he refers to in his complaint went to my investors, and we gave him records to verify this,” Chais stated in the letter.

The Stanley Chais Letter