SYRACUSE -- One local financial advisor says pensioners shouldn't panic, with word Thursday that the Bernard Madoff scandal has reached Central New York.
CNBC is reporting that the local carpenters union in Syracuse may have lost between $100 million and $150 million in their pension funds that Madoff had invested. A second local union, the International Union of Operating Engineers, issued a statement saying they had dealings with Madoff and may have lost 15% of their assets.
Bryan Place, who runs Place Financial Services in Manlius, says most folks who plan to depend on a pension shouldn't worry. Place told Action News that "pensions are still safe. It's not that pensions are no longer safe. We have to be careful and go back to fundamentals that they're diversified and their with multiple money managers."
Madoff stands accused of bilking his investors to the tune of $50 billion through what prosecutors call an elaborate Ponzi scheme. Madoff is now under house arrest.
Politicians in Washington are now demanding that the Securities and Exchange Commission hire extra investigators to probe the case and to thwart future cases. But, Bryan Place says "there's never just one cockroach out there. I'm willing to bet that there's probably some others. I'd be surprised they're of this scale though, because this is enormous."
