Precisely when and how Breslauer hooked up with Madoff is unknown. (Breslauer refused requests for an interview.)

A Spielberg representative confirmed that a charity the director founded, the Wunderkinder Foundation, had invested with Madoff and lost money, but gave no dollar figures. According to regulatory filings, Madoff’s firm accounted for roughly 80 percent of the foundation’s interest and dividend income in 2006.

It appears that for the past few years, Spielberg and Katzenberg were Breslauer’s sole clients; this has at least limited the scope of the damage Madoff inflicted in Hollywood. Still, according to a longtime friend of Breslauer’s, the mess has taken a toll on him that is both financial and emotional.

“He feels horrible about what this has done to the philanthropy of Steven and Jeffrey,” the friend says. “He is a decent and ethical person. He’s a real intellectual, not a scammer. He’s no Broadway Danny Rose.”

But that’s no guarantee he’s off the hook. In the wake of the revelations about Madoff’s scheme, Greenberg Glusker, a top business-and-entertainment law ­firm (and home to famed Hollywood litigator Bert Fields), formed an investment-fraud group in late January. Its aim, says partner Michael Greene, is to recover assets if possible, to seek tax relief to protect against future loss and risk, “and to pursue such actions as may be appropriate against managers and others who were responsible for the decision to invest with the Madoff group.”

“We have a lot of celebrity and Hollywood clients, as well as others, who have been affected,” says Greene. “We’ve had quite a number of calls, though how many will result in significant action on our part is hard to judge. It could be a dozen; it could be double that.”

Already, the federal suit against Stanley Chais is revealing how complex at least one Madoff tributary may be. In the complaint, Chaleff, the lead plaintiff, says he was part of a 50-member investment group called CMG that lost the $75 million to $80 million it gave to one of Chais’ companies. In all, the suit alleges, Chais managed about 10 such groups of investors. (Screenwriter Eric Roth’s suit in state court alleges that Chais lost “hundreds of millions of dollars” of clients’ money.) Reed Kathrein, Chaleff’s Berkeley-based attorney, is seeking to have the federal lawsuit certified as a class action.

But other Chais clients say they believe the business manager was as much of a victim as they were. “I don’t believe Stan knew. I don’t think he would do that to his wife and kids,” says the former television marketing executive who lost $600,000 with Chais.

She adds that her late father, who was a writer for the TV shows Bewitched and MASH, among others, had invested with Chais when she was a child. No one in her family had ever heard the name Madoff until Chais’ office called in December with the devastating news that their money was gone.

“I inherited this nightmare, which for years was a blessing,” she says, adding that her losses have forced her to put her three-level hillside house, with 180-­degree views of Universal Studios and the San Fernando Valley, on the market.

Chais did not return phone calls. His only public utterance came in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles: “Like everybody else who trusted and invested with Bernie Madoff, he betrayed my trust.”