Among the far-flung feeder funds, brokerage houses and institutions interconnected in the vast Ponzi scheme perpetuated by Bernard L. Madoff, one little-known local bank is now in the spotlight, the New York Times DealBook blog reported yesterday. Westport National Bank and its parent company, Connecticut Community Bank, is a basic community bank. It has one main office and nine affiliated branches, all within a small radius stretching from Fairfield to Greenwich, Conn. But to more than 200 individual investors, it was the bank that should have stood sentry over their money. A lawsuit brought by investors who lost a combined $60 million in the Madoff Ponzi scheme seeks to show that the bank failed at its job as the custodial bank in charge of their money.
