Financier Bernard Madoff leaves federal court in Manhattan, New York, March 10, 2009. Madoff attended a hearing involving the conflicted position of his legal representatives amid allegations of multi-billion dollar fraud.
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The tenth and final distribution from the late Ponzi scheme king Bernie Madoff’s Victims Fund begins Monday, Ministry of Justice explain.
The final payment, amounting to more than $131 million, has been distributed to more than 23,000 victims worldwide. The U.S. Department of Justice said that when completed, the fund will distribute more than $4.3 billion to more than 40,000 victims in nearly 130 countries.
The department said this figure represented almost 94% of the scam’s estimated total losses.
The final payment is made by Madoff Victims Fund The announcement comes some 16 years after Madoff’s fraud was revealed.
“Today’s allocation represents an unprecedented conclusion to compensation for victims in civil forfeiture proceedings related to the Madoff scheme,” said James Dennehy, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office.
“These victims implicitly trusted Madoff with their investments, only to ultimately lose money as a result of his selfish schemes,” Dennehy said.
Madoff, head of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities in New York, pleaded guilty in March 2009 to 11 felonies related to what federal prosecutors called the world’s largest Ponzi scheme.
Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for the fraud, which spanned four decades and involved him using funds raised from other clients to repay clients instead of trading investment proceeds as he claimed.
He died in a federal prison in North Carolina in April 2021 at the age of 82, nearly a year after his request for compassionate release was denied because he suffered from end-stage renal disease.
When Madoff’s fraud first became public knowledge, prosecutors estimated total losses at $65 billion. But this estimate That number dropped sharply once authorities deducted the false investment gains and interest that Madoff’s clients were deceived into believing.
The largest portion of funds for Madoff victims, about $2.2 billion, came from civil forfeiture recoveries from the estate of late Madoff investor Jeffry Picower, the Justice Department said.
Another $1.7 billion comes from JPMorgan Chase as a deferred prosecution agreement January 2014 with the Department of Justice.
The Justice Department noted on Monday that the remaining funds for the victims came from “civil forfeiture proceedings against investor Carl Shapiro and his family, as well as civil and civil forfeiture lawsuits against Bernard L. Madoff, Peter B. Madoff and their co-conspirators.” Criminal Forfeiture Proceedings”.
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