Scott Rothstein

Lawyer Scott Rothstein was living high back in 2006. The Bronx-born boy turned Florida legal eagle led the life of the .1 percenter, which, in his words consisted of "the ability to do whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want, by whatever means you can think of."

Back in 2009, Mr. Rothstein, however, his house of cards came crashing down when the feds caught wind of his side project, a "structured settlement" plot that evolved into a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme. Now serving a fifty-year sentence in a Floridian federal penitentiary, another house in Mr. Rothstein's once stacked deck has disappeared: a home once belonging to Mr. Rothstein, then seized by the U.S government, has sold for $5.09 million, city records show.

The "United States of America" is listed as the seller on the property deed, with an address of One Saint Andrew's Plaza, the U.S. Justice Department's location in New York City. The buyer purchased anonymously through the entity "Valen LLC," which appears to belong to a foreigner.

According to a listing from Douglas Elliman agent Sabrina Saltiel, the buyer will have "BREATHTAKING SKYLINE AND RIVER VIEWS" (emphasis hers) from their new pad. The two-bedroom, two-bath place is inside 151 East 58th Street, a.k.a. One Beacon Court a.k.a. the Bloomberg Building. The 42nd-floor home comes "fully equipped with top of the line everything," which comes as little surprise considering that Mr. Rothstein likes, well liked, all things opulent. "I tend toward the flashy side, but it's a persona. It's just a fucking persona," he said. We wonder how his persona is liking those orange jumpsuits. Flashy indeed!

Mr. Rothstein lived a rockstar life, with raucous sex parties where, we imagine, he didn't just make it rain stolen money, he conjured up whole damn hurricanes. We can only imagine what that midtown apartment has seen!

Sex parties or no, Mr. Rothstein bought the place with his wife, Kimberly, in 2008 (just one year before his arrest) for $5.95 million. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the government sold it at a loss of almost one million dollars, after an initial asking price of $5.4 million. We can hear his victims grumbling from their beachfront Tampa pads now.

eknutsen@observer.com

Roberto Settineri on Wednesday pleaded guilty to a charge of money laundering conspiracy and got a 50-year sentence. He said he had shuffled money around and destroyed Ponzi scheme-related documents for Rothstein.

According to Jeffrey Weiner, Settineri's lawyer, Rothstein double-crossed Settineri, ratting him out to the Feds. "My client was foolish enough to try to help Rothstein. He didn't start out the day with the intention to commit a crime. He regrets what he did, and he's taken full responsibility for it." In January of this year, Rothstein agreed to cooperate with the government as part of a plea deal related to the charges.

Rothstein drew people into the scheme by offering to let them invest in legal settlements his firm, Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler P.A., was working on. As with Bernie Madoff's fake investment fund and Nevin Shapiro's fabricated grocery distributorship, the settlement agreements were imaginary.

But one investor tied to Mr. Rothstein has already put his eight-room New York condo on the market. A Time Warner Center duplex that belongs to Doug Von Allmen was just listed for $18.45 million.

Mr. Von Allmen is a venture capitalist who founded a massive beauty supply distributor (which makes him something of a cosmetics magnate, just like his neighbor Sandie Tillotson, who has asked $80 million for her Time Warner penthouse.) He is the type who got two new yachts--the 197-foot Linda Lou and 157-foot Lady Linda--in a single autumn. When the Rothstein scandal broke, he went public as an investor. "The amount of money was substantial. It was an amount I wish I'd given to charity instead of that investment. It won't change my lifestyle that much, but it was a nice sum," Mr. Von Allmen said. "I will still eat out at a restaurant every night, this is just something I need to get through."

According to the duplex's listing, his Time Warner apartment has a 45.5-foot living room, a formal dining room with "vistas to the Atlantic Ocean," a marble chef's kitchen with a wine refrigerator, a private elevator, five marble bathrooms (plus a guest powder room), and a master suite with his-and-hers walk-in closets (plus his-and-hers bathrooms).

"Hopefully, everybody affected by this will still have a good life," he said in another interview. "They may not have as many toys."

Mr. Von Allmen's brokers are Elizabeth Lee Sample and Brenda Powers, the powerful agents who listed Tyco CFO Mark Swartz's Ritz-Carlton duplex for $28 million. "Everything is questionable when you deal with that much money," Ms. Powers said in a joint interview last year. "From a moral point of view, yes, it is questionable; but from the business point of view, it isn't questionable, it's business."

mabelson@observer.com