NY is newest Madoff victim

Jailed Ponzi king Bernie Madoff, who ripped off billions of dollars from investors, can count the state’s taxman among those looking to get a piece of his assets.

Madoff has joined the ranks of New York’s 250 top tax deadbeats this month with an outstanding bill to Albany for $984,280 worth of sales tax owed by his now defunct securities firm.

But when it comes to collecting from the disgraced financier, the state has to get in line with investors looking for pennies on the dollar out of what the feds have collected from his leftover cash and the sale of his homes and yachts.

 
Irving Bilzinsky,
At No. 68 on the state deadbeat list, Madoff is far from the top. That honor is held by former Scores strip club owner Irving Bilzinsky who has a staggering bill of $15.3 million — virtually all of it from sales tax and withholding taxes from the club.

Bilzinsky, of Brooklyn, no longer owns the club.

Compiling and publishing the list is Albany’s attempt to shame some tax deadbeats into paying up.

Among the top debtors according to state records:

* Dennis Levine, a onetime investment banker at Drexel Burnham Lambert, was at the center of a 1980s insider-trading scandal that led to the arrests of Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. He owes $6 million in taxes with his wife, Laurie.

* Former City Council President Andrew Stein, who once set tax rates while a top government official, is on the list for a $470,669 debt for unpaid personal-income taxes. A Democrat, Stein left elected office in 1994 after his post was abolished.

* Nello Balan, a New York celebrity restaurateur, owes $1.4 million in sales tax — and it’s not his first run-in with authorities over a tax bill. In 2008, his Upper East Side restaurant was padlocked until he forked over $1.8 million in back taxes.

* Dr. Victor Rosenberg, dubbed the “cosmetic surgeon to the stars” along with his wife, Deborah, owes the state $976,428 in income tax.

* Agnes Nolan, one of Manhattan’s high-end Realtors who recently put her Central Park West duplex on the market for $13.9 million, owes $875,624, almost all of which is personal-income tax.