Victims of notorious Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff are receiving their final payments — bringing the total amount doled out by a compensation fund to over $4.3 billion, the feds announced Monday.
The Madoff Victim Fund began distributing its 10th and last payment of $131.4 million to more than 23,000 victims worldwide, according to the Manhattan US Attorney’s office.
The Department of Justice set up the fund over a decade ago to repay people swindled by Madoff — who died behind bars in 2021 while serving out a 150-year sentence.
In total, 40,930 of Madoff’s victims from 127 counties have recouped over $4.3 billion in compensation — or 93.71% of their losses, the feds said.
Madoff’s massive ripoff — believed to be the biggest stock fraud in history — came to light roughly 16 years ago during the financial crisis of the late 2000s.
The reviled scammer pleaded guilty to 11 financial crimes — including fraud, money-laundering and perjury — in 2009 for swindling investors, friends and family through the crooked wealth management company he founded in 1960.
Starting around the 1990s, the fraudster collected money from others through his company Bernie L. Madoff Investment Securities with the promise he’d invest it — but then he never did, he admitted at his sentencing.
His victims included charities and retirees who entrusted their life savings to him, as well as New York University, the International Olympic Committee and notable figures like former Disney studio chief Jeffrey Katsenberg, legendary Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax and Hollywood couple Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick.
Madoff’s fraud has been tied to at least four suicides, including his elder son Mark’s, who hanged himself on Dec. 11, 2010 — the two-year anniversary of his dad’s arrest.
His younger son Andrew also blamed Madoff for the recurrence of the rare cancer, mantle-cell lymphoma, that killed him in 2014.
Madoff was sentenced in June 2009 to a century-and-a-half behind bars.
He and his co-conspirators, including brother Peter Madoff, were forced to fork over the ill-gotten gains as part of the prosecution by the Manhattan US attorney’s office — funds used to pay back victims, the feds said.
Additionally, about $2.2 billion of the victim compensation funds were collected from the estate of a deceased Madoff investor, Jeffry Picower, and another $1.7 billion came as part of an agreement with JPMorgan Chase Bank, according to prosecutors.
“This Office has never stopped pursuing justice for victims of history’s largest Ponzi scheme,” said Acting Manhattan US Attorney Edward Kim in a statement.
The DOJ “is committed to protecting and assisting victims of crime, no matter how long it takes and no matter how complicated the endeavor,” Kim added.
Madoff in 2020 asked for compassionate release from prison, claiming he only had months to live because he had kidney disease.
But his bid to be freed was denied after some 500 victims wrote letters to a judge saying Madoff should die behind bars.
He also asked Trump in 2019 to reduce his prison term, but the request went unanswered.
Madoff died at 82 of kidney disease and hypertension on April 14, 2021 at a federal lockup in North Carolina.
Read the full article here
