“For Monica and Walter Noel, their hilltop retreat on Mustique is all about the mix – of family, friends, great times and a sexy global design style,” declared Town & Country in 2005 about the founder of the hedge fund group, Fairfield Greenwich, his Swiss-Brazilian wife and their five photogenic daughters.
Three years earlier, the Noels were photographed for a Vanity Fair article called “Golden in Greenwich”. The piece marvelled at their lifestyle, with the “glamazon” daughters, having married globe-trotting financiers, living in London, New York, Rio de Janeiro and Lugano.
It was a fairy tale existence, in more ways than one. The Noels' millions, it turns out, were largely derived from Bernie Madoff's alleged $50bn (€36bn, £33bn) Ponzi scheme. The fees to investors on Fairfield's biggest hedge fund, the Madoff- managed Fairfield Sentry, produced two-thirds of Fairfield's $250m revenues, and $200m profits, in 2007.