If you listen to Doug Kass’ “predictions,” you may have heard him rambling about an arrangement where the Russian mafia was heavily invested with Bernie Madoff:

The Russian mafia and Russian oligarchs are found to be large investors with Madoff. During the next few weeks, a well-known CNBC investigative reporter documents that the Russian oligarchs, certain members of the Russian mafia and several Colombian drug cartel families have invested and laundered more than $2 billion in Madoff’s strategy through offshore master feeders and through several fund of funds…

That’s speculation -  but if true, it’s certainly enough to make Madoff reluctant to leave the house; maybe that house arrest thing isn’t so bad after all, even if you can’t get to the post office to mail out all those sentimental Tiffany watches and whatnot. CNBC is, at the least, enjoying fanning the rumor mill on the Russian mob connection, between Charlie Gasparino and  Larry Kudlow/Patrick Brosnan’s conviction that Madoff had to be running money for organized crime. It makes sense on its face, at least – Madoff was one of the few people to whom you could give a lot of money and not be asked many questions – and he was definitely showing higher returns than a locker at the Greyhound station.

Gary Weiss is not convinced, and thinks it’s possible Madoff was less an accomplice and more a mark:

The mob doesn’t “invest” with anybody if they can help it. They take. There’s a lot of talk about money laundering and such, but my hunch is that if the mob is involved (and there’s not a shred of evidence on that so far), it would be old-fashioned extortion. The Russian mob “stars” in a lot of the half-baked conspiracy theories you see floating around the Internet, but in this case it is entirely credible.

That’s “Reason To Really Want To Stay On House Arrest #1.” Now, a potential second one…

Lauren sends me this story from Bloomberg, that reveals Uma Thurman’s fiance, Arpad Busson, lost quite a bit of cash to Madoff as well (we were LOL at the headline, “Uma Thurman No Help to Arpad Busson in Madoff Fraud’s Nightmare“):

In mid-December, EIM [managed by Arpad Busson] disclosed it was one of at least a dozen funds of funds caught up in the massive alleged fraud perpetrated by New York investment manager Bernard Madoff. Busson says $230 million of client funds were invested with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, 2 percent of EIM’s assets. Madoff may have lost as much as $50 billion in what prosecutors say he himself described as a “giant Ponzi scheme,” in which he paid redemptions by existing investors with new investments.

Bloomberg appears to care way too much that Busson is some kind of aristocratic socialite, and we will only become more interested in the Madoff-EIM connection if Busson asks his fiancee to get decked out in a yellow catsuit and go after Madoff, as shown above.