Madoff victims’ fund covers most Ponzi losses: DOJ

The tenth and last distribution of a fund for victims of dying Ponzi king of stratagem Bernie Madoff began on Monday, Ministry of Justice stated.

The newest cost, of greater than $131 million, is meant for greater than 23,000 victims all over the world. When accomplished, greater than $4.3 billion can have been distributed by the fund to greater than 40,000 victims in practically 130 international locations, the DOJ stated.

This determine represents virtually 94% of the overall estimated losses as a result of rip-off, the division stated.

The ultimate disbursement by the Madoff Victims Fund was introduced about 16 years after Madoff’s fraud was uncovered.

“At this time’s distribution represents an unprecedented conclusion in compensating victims of civil forfeiture actions associated to the Madoff scheme,” stated James Dennehy, Assistant Director in Cost of the FBI’s New York Area Workplace.

“These victims implicitly trusted Madoff with their investments, solely to in the end lose important quantities of cash due to his egocentric plan,” Dennehy stated.

Madoff, who ran Bernard L. Madoff Funding Securities in New York, pleaded responsible in March 2009 to 11 crimes associated to what federal prosecutors referred to as the world’s largest Ponzi scheme.

Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in jail for the fraud, which spanned 4 a long time and concerned him paying his purchasers with cash collected from different purchasers, not with industrial beneficial properties as he claimed.

He deceased in April 2021, at age 82, in a federal jail in North Carolina, practically a 12 months after being denied a request for compassionate launch resulting from terminal kidney illness.

When Madoff’s fraud first turned public, prosecutors estimated the overall loss at $65 billion. However this estimate fell sharply as soon as authorities subtracted the quantity of funding beneficial properties and phantom curiosity that Madoff’s purchasers have been duped into believing existed.

Many of the fund for Madoff victims, about $2.2 billion, got here from a civil forfeiture of the property of Jeffry Picower, a now-deceased Madoff investor, the DOJ stated.

One other $1.7 billion got here from JPMorgan Chase as a part of a deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ in January 2014. JPMorgan Chase and its predecessor establishments have been the first financial institution via which Madoff operated his scheme, the DOJ beforehand stated.

The rest of the victims’ fund got here from a “civil forfeiture motion in opposition to investor Carl Shapiro and his household and from civil and legal forfeiture actions in opposition to Bernard L. Madoff, Peter B. Madoff and their co-conspirators,” the DOJ stated Monday.