U.S. Marshals seize Madoff mansion

By Hans Deryk

PALM BEACH, Florida (Reuters) - U.S. Marshals on Wednesday seized a $9.4 million (6.5 million pound) luxury home in Florida belonging to disgraced Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff and his wife after earlier confiscating two of their leisure boats.

There was no one living inside at the time as the federal agents moved into the two-story property at 410 North Lake Way, Palm Beach, set amid carefully manicured lawns and hedges on Florida's Intracoastal Waterway.

"We are securing the house, changing all the locks on the house ... we are taking a complete inventory," Barry Golden of the U.S. Marshals Service told Reuters.

Madoff, a 70-year-old former Nasdaq stock market chairman, has been charged with operating the biggest investment fraud on Wall Street, cheating private investors, charities and pension funds out of an estimated $65 billion.

The U.S. Marshals swooped down on the Madoff's Florida winter getaway after seizing two recreation boats belonging to them.

The Madoff assets, which were handed over to official custodians for safe-keeping, were secured under a seizure warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, where Madoff is in jail awaiting sentencing.

Locks were changed on more than half a dozen doors of the Palm Beach home, including the big polished wooden front door.

"It's a fully-furnished lived-in house," Golden said, speaking from the property, which is tucked behind a towering ficus hedge in the exclusive beach enclave. The backyard pool is fringed with palms and a flowering bougainvillea.