In 1989, Noel merged his business with a small brokerage firm whose general partner was Jeffrey Tucker, who had worked as a lawyer in the enforcement division of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

[3] Noel met his Brazilian-born wife, Monica Haegler, who hails from a prominent Swiss family, while she was studying at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

Piedrahita was named a Fairfield founding partner in 2007; he owns 22 percent[1] and became one of the firm's dominant representatives of European and Latin American banking and investment.

[13][14] Monica Noel's niece, Bianca Haegler, a well-known Brazilian socialite, and her father, Alex, reportedly steered Brazilian investors to the firm,[15] as did her cousin Jorge Paulo Lemann, Brazil's richest financier, co-owner of InBev, Budweiser's parent company.

In 2007, Tucker, chairman of Empire Racing, led the group of thoroughbred investors, who sought to bid for New York State's horse-racing franchise.

Subsequently, Fairfield Greenwich formally disclosed Madoff's role – and in the process raised about $1.7 billion from investors in the US and Europe.

[1] Noel and Tucker created the Fairfield Sentry fund in 1990 with $1 million in "seed money", and began expanding it a year later.

At the time, Noel and Tucker said Madoff provided more information and transparency than most hedge funds, and operated a reputable Wall Street firm.

[16] The fund was backed by loans from banks including Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria and Nomura Holdings, which invested about $304 million.

[19] The Mugrabis, extremely wealthy art collectors from Colombia who have lived in New York for more than 20 years, and long-time friends of Piedrahita (a Colombian who had married Noel's eldest daughter, Corina), were investors.

"We had very little money with the fund — just under a million dollars — so I am not that upset personally," said Alberto Mugrabi, a son of the family patriarch.

Chase had become "concerned about lack of transparency", and had performed due diligence which had "raised doubts" about Madoff's operation.

[23] Hedge fund manager Suzanne Murphy believed that Noel and other Fairfield executives should have wondered why Madoff wasn't charging them anything when "all they were doing was collecting the money.

[26] For years, Fairfield's return stream rose steadily upward with only a few downticks, represented graphically by a near-perfect 45-degree angle.

[23] Madoff frequently "over-hedged" his trades for Fairfield Sentry by buying more options than necessary to hedge his stock positions.

In June 2008, a financial consultant noticed that even with the market as a whole trending downward, Madoff was on the winning side of every trade.

[29] The class action was a result of the consolidation of multiple cases filed in federal and state court against Fairfield Greenwich.

Accordingly, the Court finds that Plaintiffs allege a relationship between the investors and the Administrators that gives rise to a duty of care[34]Fairfield was also a defendant in a lawsuit filed in Miami against PricewaterhouseCoopers Ireland by investors in a fund marketed by defendant Banco Santander SA, Europe's second-largest bank by market value, which lost an estimated $3 billion.

[35] On April 1, 2009, Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin filed a civil action charging Fairfield Greenwich with fraud, breaching its fiduciary duty to clients by failing to provide promised due diligence on its investments.

[36][37] The Secretary of State had stated that he had no plans to settle the lawsuit in spite of Fairfield Greenwich's offer to repay all Massachusetts investors, and said he was going to force Fairfield to explain e-mails and other evidence that appear to show company officials knew about potential problems with Madoff but failed to disclose them to clients.

Fairfield Greenwich neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing, accepted a censure from state officials, agreed to provide restitution to Massachusetts investors, and paid a $500,000 fine.

The pension fund case was Retirement Program for Employees of the Town of Fairfield v. Madoff, FBT-CV-09-5023735-S, Superior Court of Connecticut (Bridgeport).

[42] [43][44] On May 18, 2009, Irving Picard sued Fairfield Greenwich Group seeking the return of $3.2 billion covering the period from 2002 to Madoff's arrest in December 2008.

[46] However, it was conjectured that the money may already be in the hands of Fairfield's own clients, who are likely off-limits to Picard, since they weren't direct investors with Madoff.

The Fairfield entity defendants recklessly disregarded their duties as the fund's risk and investment adviser and their actions and inactions constitute gross negligence."

[48] On July 20, 2009, Justice Edward Alexander Bannister granted the request to liquidate the Fairfield Sentry funds, worth more than $7.2 billion in December 2008, now less than $70 million, incorporated in 1990 under the mutual fund statutes of the British Virgin Islands and technically under the control of their local directors.

[53] Executive Charles Murphy initially offered for sale his 1882, 12,000-square-foot (1,100 m2) limestone townhouse, located at 7 East 67th Street, Lenox Hill, Manhattan, but as of December 2009, the home was no longer listed.