Robert Lappin, the Chief Executive Officer of Shetland Properties, made considerable money managing industrial parks in the Boston area. For 60 current and former employees, Lappin had invested their retirement plan funds, as well as Lappin's charitable foundation assets, with Bernie Madoff. When Madoff's huge Ponzi scheme blew up, so did the retirement plan, the foundation and most of Lappin's personal wealth. The total lost was over $83 million, including a personal loss for Lappin of $18 million.
After six months of legal wrangling, Lappin, helped by his three children, wrote checks to his employees for $5.1 million. “I think he saw this as an ethical test,” said Deborah Coltin, who runs the foundation.
Lappin may have been following the example of his father, who never evicted any tenants from the apartments he owned during the Great Depression. But Lappin gives another reason: “It had a great deal to do with sleep. I had to do this, or I would not have been able to sleep well for the rest of my life.”
– from the story reported in Readers Digest, June/July 2010 issue
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