Movie idea: the daughter of Jewish refugees flees Europe for Wall Street, strikes it rich, gains billionaire mobster clients, but is then forced into hiding by a deal gone wrong. Bonus: it's a true story.

Her name is Sonja Kohn, and her story is told in the NYT today. I'm just ripping it off. She's a 60-year-old Austrian ultra-Orthodox Jew who made most of her money recently by steering international clients into the winning funds of—ta da—Bernie Madoff. Now her clients have lost everything, and Kohn—once known as "Austria's woman on Wall Street"—has gone into hiding. Like a spy novel! She's not at her New York home, or her Vienna apartment, or her Zurich villa. Why? The Russians:

But another theory widely repeated by those who know Mrs. Kohn is that she may be afraid of some particularly displeased investors: Russian oligarchs whose money made up a chunk of the $2.1 billion that Bank Medici invested with Mr. Madoff.

“With Russian oligarchs as clients,” said a Viennese banker who knew Mrs. Kohn and her husband socially, “she might have reason to be afraid.”

I see Julia Roberts as Kohn, Daniel Craig as her dashing husband, and that dude from Transporter as the Russian assassin. And Samuel L. Jackson as the streetwise homeless man with a heart of gold who gets swept up in the adventure! [NYT]