Controversy Follows Madoff Lawyer, Who Got First Death Threat in 1975
Bernard Madoff’s lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin, has had a long-held fascination with securities law—and a longtime ability to attract controversy.
Sorkin became “smitten” during his first exposure to securities litigation as a Manhattan intern in the federal prosecutor’s office in 1967, the New York Times reports. After graduating from law school at George Washington University, he worked three years with the Securities and Exchange Commission and five years as a federal prosecutor.
As a defense lawyer at Dickstein Shapiro, Sorkin tries fewer cases, according to the Times. “More often, he serves his clients now as the master tailor, cutting the best deal possible and, where he can, trimming a few years or a few thousand dollars off a guilty client’s sentence,” the story says.
Sorkin’s ties to Madoff have attracted controversy and charges of a conflict of interest. Several members of Sorkin’s prior law firm had invested with Madoff, as did Sorkin’s parents, the story says.
Sorkin got his first death threat, from a convicted stock swindler, when he was a federal prosecutor in 1975, he told the Times. He still has a newspaper clipping about the threat. More recently, as the defense lawyer for Madoff, he has attracted lots of angry messages, including one threatening missive he turned over to the FBI.
“As one Jew to another, I deeply regret that the Sorkin family did not perish in the Nazi death camps,” reads one of the messages.
Above the Law summarized the Times story this way: “Start archiving the death threats made against you now, because you never know when the New York Times will interview you.”
