Ruth Madoff may not have many friends these days, but her big sister is coming to her defense.
Madoff just got tossed out of her $7 million penthouse apartment at 133 East 64th Street, per the court-approved agreement reached last Friday. She left with nothing but a straw bag and the clothes on her back.
Yet Joan Alpern Roman says all the flack her sister's gotten as the wife of arguably the most disgraced financier in history is misdirected.
"The press has maligned her," the 72-year-old Roman said from her country-club home in Boca Raton, Fla., according to The New York Post.
Although she hasn't been charged in her husband's $65-billion Ponzi scheme, many have blasted Ruth for keeping quiet in the months after his scheme was unearthed. She released a statement for the first time on the day Bernie was sentenced, expressing sympathy for the victims and maintaining she knew nothing in advance about the scandal that would rock the nation and, in effect, the entire world.
Ruth was ordered to hand over "any and all jewelry," one three-quarter length Russian sable coat, one sheared mink coat, and all "apparel, accessories, footwear, leather goods and luggage," according to the court-ordered forfeiture. She was allowed to keep $2.5 million of the former fortune her husband procured by illegal means.
Ostracized by all her former in-groups, Ruth isn't permitted to go to her old hairdressers or walk in the same circles as her former friends. Some Midtown apartment buildings won't even rent to her because of her now infamous reputation by association, and the feds confiscated her places in France, Florida and Long Island.
