Boston, MA – A North Shore-based philanthropist is using $5 million of his own money to restore the retirement savings of his employees who lost their nest eggs to admitted swindler Bernard L. Madoff.
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Ronald I. Lappin today began restoring the funds to 60 employees of his company, Salem-based Shetland Properties, Inc., and to his private charity, The Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation. The employees’ 401(k) plans, as well as the foundation’s money and some of Lappin’s personal wealth was managed by Madoff, who used the funds in what investigators believe is the largest Ponzi scheme in history.
“I wanted to do the right thing,” he said. “And, I feel, I’ve done the right thing and that to me is my reward.”
Lappin has also revived his foundation, which closed briefly in December after losing $8 million to Madoff. The nonprofit supports Jewish education and culture on the North Shore, and has restored 17 programs in education, interfaith outreach and family development. On Sunday the foundation helped send 82 Jewish teens to Israel after raising $450,000 in private donations for the Youth To Israel travel program.
Lappin has owned Shetland Properties, Inc., for 51 years. He said his net worth is now less than $10 million, a tenth of what it was before the scandal.
so are all rich people greedy ?????
what he did is realy nice considering the fact that he’s not that rich any more
KOL HAKAVOD !!!!!
Thank you VIN for sharing such a wonderful story. After months of reading almost every other day about another yiddeshe ponzi scheme or ganof, this is a great relief. Hoepfully there will be more stories like this.
Wow, reminds me of Fueirwerker (not sure of the spelling)
Wow! What a wonderful individual. Thank you VINNEWS for bringing this information to us.. It is very inspiring and a big kiddush Hashem. May you merit to continue to bring us such good news and to continue making wise choices in your coverage
I hope that when the media reports this news they will report that he is jewish just as when they reported the madoff scandal they made a point of saying that he was jewish
This came on at 5 pm how many comments have we seen since then I always prove my point as to good news hardly ever makes for great conversations especially on the blogs. I wish there was a web site for good news only. Perhaps we can catch people doing things right on regular basis. Lets search lets explress and praise often maybe there won’t be so much negative behavior.
A tremendous kiddush hashem. Hopefully the news orgs will pick this up, but we all know they are not interested in good news.
Kol Hakavod, it’s good to hear of someone doing the right thing, he should be gebensht