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He hasn’t played in the MLB in almost two decades. A team will pay him $ 1.2 million a year through 2035

He hasn’t bought a professional baseball glove in 19 years, but he still has a paycheck – and a hefty one at that.

The Bobby Bonilla Day for New York Mets fans takes place every July 1st.

The former thug retired with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2001 but has collected a check of nearly $ 1.2 million from the Mets every year on July 1st for almost a decade.

The deal is part of a contract negotiated by Bonilla’s agent Dennis Gilbert and paying Bonilla $ 1,193,248.20 each year through 2035. Bonilla, a former all-star who last played with the Mets in 1999, will be 72 when his contract with the team expires.

How could Gilbert secure such a sweet deal for his client? You can both thank the embarrassed financier Bernie Madoff and Mets owner Fred Wilpon.

The Mets wanted to part with Bonilla in 1999, but he still had $ 6 million on his contract. Wilpon believed that Madoff would generate a huge return on his investment, but the Mets owner turned out to be a victim of Madoff’s infamous Ponzi program

Instead of paying Bonilla directly, Wilpon decided to defer payments so that the money could be inadvertently invested in Madoff’s Ponzi program.

Gilbert negotiated with the team to defer payments until 2011 with an annual interest rate of 8%.

Madoff was the mastermind of the most notorious Ponzi program in history. A Ponzi program is a form of fraud in which funds are used by newer investors to pay profits to former investors, which leads them to believe that their investments are part of a successful company.

Madoff has been in prison for 150 years for the multi-billion dollar program he has been running for decades.

Overall, Bonilla will get away with a $ 29.8 million payday due to Wilpon’s mistake.

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