Running a feeder fund looks like the easiest job in the world. All you do is give investors’ money to some other guy who manages it, while you take a nice fee off the top. You probably spend most of your time at country clubs, beaches and golf courses rubbing elbows with potential new investors, and I bet you can write all that stuff off as business expenses, too.

That’s what J. Ezra Merkin did, except he told people he was actually managing their money – you know, executing trades, doing research, stuff like that – when in reality he was handing it over to Bernie Madoff (who, as it turns out, wasn’t doing any of that stuff either). Not to split hairs or beat around the bush, but that’s a criminal kind of misrepresentation. NYU and several other large investors have sued him over this, and now, Andrew Cuomo is charging that Merkin is a dyed-in-the-wool fraudster:

“Merkin held himself out to investors as an investing guru…In reality, Merkin was but a master marketer,” says Mr. Cuomo in the complaint.

About 85% of the investors in the Ascot fund did not know their money was siphoned to Mr. Madoff, the complaint says. For those that knew, the truth about the size and scope of the investment was obfuscated, says Mr. Cuomo. Mr. Merkin collected an annual fee from Ascot’s investors amounting to 1% to 1.5% of the total assets in the fund – a fee that included the fictitious Madoff returns, says the complaint. By 2008, Mr. Merkin was collecting about $25.5 million a year from managing Ascot.

Mr. Merkin told investors in his Gabriel and Ariel funds that he was investing in distressed assets and bankruptcies when he actually transferred more than one third of each of those funds’ money to Mr. Madoff starting in about 2000. Mr. Madoff’s supposed strategy was about stocks and stock options, not distressed assets.

The man’s Wikipedia entry has separate entries for two separate “debacle”s in addition to this “scandal,” leading you to believe this Merkin is made of teflon. Hopefully, Cuomo can trim his topiary back a bit.