March 16 (Bloomberg) -- More than $100 million in real estate, cash, bonds, art, autos, boats and other property owned by Bernard Madoff and his wife, Ruth Madoff, is subject to forfeiture, prosecutors said.

The government said in a court filing yesterday that it intends to seize assets including the Madoffs’ $7 million Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan and homes in Montauk, New York, Palm Beach, Florida, and France. Prosecutors will also seek $17 million in cash and $45 million in bonds in accounts in Ruth Madoff’s name, said Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin.

Madoff, 70, pleaded guilty March 12 to defrauding investors of as much as $65 billion in the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. His attorneys filed a request with the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York that he be freed from prison until he is sentenced on June 16. Madoff faces 150 years behind bars for using money from new investors to pay off old ones in a global fraud that ran from at least the early 1990s.

The government’s “notice of intent to seek forfeiture” is not an actual seizure request. Rather, it alerts U.S. District Judge Denny Chin and the Madoffs that prosecutors will be filing documents seeking seizure. The notice doesn’t say when the request will be made. Madoff’s appellate argument is scheduled for March 19.

Ruth Madoff hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing. Her lawyer, Peter Chavkin, and Bernard Madoff’s lawyer, Dan Horwitz, both declined to comment.

Ruth Not Accused

Lawyers for the Madoffs have said she alone is the owner of the cash, bonds, and Manhattan apartment, which they say are “unrelated” to her husband’s fraud, a judge said this month.

Separately, the trustee liquidating Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC said in court papers that some of Madoff’s assets may be in Gibraltar.

Irving Picard, appointed by the Securities Investor Protection Corp. to unwind Madoff’s business, is seeking to hire attorneys at the law firm Attias & Levy to represent him in the British territory, according to a filing today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. The filing didn’t specify what the assets were.

The Madoffs claimed on Dec. 31 that they had a net worth of $826 million, according to a court filing on March 13. Of that, $700 million was the net value of Madoff’s ownership in Madoff Securities. The firm has since been valued by outsiders as worth $10 million or less. Ruth Madoff was an employee of Madoff Securities.

Cohmad Securities

About $45 million in municipal bonds held at Cohmad Securities in Ruth Madoff’s name, and $17 million in a Wachovia Bank account in her name, are subject to seizure, prosecutors said. So is Bernard Madoff’s interest in Cohmad, they said. Cohmad is part-owned by Bernard Madoff and has been alleged by the Massachusetts Securities Division to be a “feeder fund” to his investment firm.

Prosecutors say they’ll also try to seize the Madoffs’ ownership interest in their Manhattan apartment; their land, buildings and personal property in Montauk, West Palm Beach, and Cap d’Antibes, France; a sport yacht called “Bull;” two fishing boats and a third vessel in Ruth Madoff’s name; and four cars, including two Mercedes-Benz automobiles.

Jerry Reisman, a lawyer at Garden City, New York-based Reisman, Peirez and Reisman, who represents 14 Madoff investors, said he expects prosecutors to seek an order freezing the assets, after which the government will try to seize them.

Fruits of a Crime

“There will have to be a determination that these assets belong to the victims, that these assets are the fruits of the crime, and that these assets were not obtained by her in a lawful manner.” Reisman said in an interview. “Even if she’s not guilty of a crime, if her husband fraudulently transferred those assets to her, she could lose them.”

Reisman said investors want the Madoff property added to the pool of assets from which they may win a recovery. Picard has been seeking to liquidate Madoff’s brokerage, find assets and distribute them to clients. So far, Picard and attorneys from the law firm Baker Hostetler LLP have found about $950 million in cash and securities.

Prosecutors and investor lawyers have successfully targeted assets of family members in other white-collar crimes. The family of John Rigas, who was jailed for looting Adelphia Communications Corp., surrendered 95 percent of its assets after his conviction.

Furniture, Art

After ex-WorldCom Inc. Chairman Bernard Ebbers conviction in an $11 billion accounting fraud, he agreed to pay as much as $45 million to the government and to investors suing him, leaving his wife with $50,000 and their Jackson, Mississippi, home. The wife of WorldCom’s chief financial officer, Scott Sullivan, was left with $2.2 million after he pleaded guilty, testified against Ebbers, and went to prison.

In the Dec. 31 court filing, the Madoffs said their Montauk home was worth $3 million, their Palm Beach home $11 million, and their Cap d’Antibes home $1 million. Furniture, household goods and art in their four dwellings were worth $9 million. They valued jewelry at $2.6 million and their boats at more than $10 million.

In the filing the Madoffs said their monthly expenses totaled $346,758, largely for maintaining and insuring their homes and boats.

Dassin said the government will also seek a $39,000 Steinway piano and $65,000 worth of silverware, owned by Ruth Madoff and located in the Manhattan apartment.

The case is U.S. v. Madoff, 09-cr-00213, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

To contact the reporters on this story: David Glovin in New York federal court at dglovin@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 16, 2009 19:56 EDT