Wilpon on Madoff: Betrayal worse than money lost

The financial losses suffered by Fred Wilpon's family in the Bernard Madoff scandal two years ago pale in comparison to the "betrayal" the Mets' owner will feel for the rest of his life.

"You don't like to lose money that's just stolen from you," Wilpon said Monday afternoon at Citi Field. "But the betrayal is something I'll never, ever forget. I'll go to my grave on that one."

Speaking at the Mets' news conference to announce changes to the general manager and manager positions, Wilpon also delivered his most expansive and revealing comments to date regarding the Madoff scandal.

"That was a total betrayal of us," Wilpon said. "We were investors for something like 25 years."

Just how much money Wilpon lost in the Ponzi scheme still is unknown publicly, and Wilpon did not offer to clear that up Monday. Initial reports when the scandal broke in December 2008 estimated the Wilpons' overall losses to be as much as $700 million. But court documents last summer said Mets Limited Partnership, which is connected to the Wilpons' Sterling Equities, took out more than $45 million more than it invested with Madoff.

Still, Wilpon insisted that the scandal has not had an effect on the way the Mets have operated in the past two years, which is something high-ranking team officials have insisted from the beginning.

"I'm not minimizing the money," Wilpon said, "but it was only one part of our business and took some liquidity away, but that's not the part of the business that was running the shop."

Wilpon added that SNY, the team-owned television network that broadcasts most Mets games, is in line for "record gross revenues and earnings."

"The Madoff issue was one business investment part of our business," Wilpon said. "We have several other parts of our business. We have several other kinds of companies, and all are doing either reasonably well or very well. The real estate business is down generally, but ours is pretty darn good."