Bernie Madoff leaves federal court docket in New York on March 10, 2009.
Jin Lee | Bloomberg by way of Getty Images
The fund for victims of Bernie Madoff‘s historic Ponzi scheme has begun its ninth payout, distributing about $159 million in government-seized funds to almost 25,000 individuals worldwide, the Department of Justice said Monday.
The announcement, made 15 years after Madoff’s arrest — and greater than two years after his death in prison — underscored the persevering with influence of Madoff’s almost $65 billion securities fraud rip-off.
The collapse of the world’s largest fraud scheme “devastated 1000’s of lives,” stated Nicole Argentieri, appearing assistant lawyer normal of the DOJ’s prison division, in a press launch.
With its latest distribution, the fund has paid out over $4.2 billion to greater than 40,800 victims who misplaced cash from the scheme, the DOJ stated.
The Madoff Victim Fund has now helped get better “over 90% of sufferer losses,” Argentieri stated.
The victims of Madoff’s decadeslong fraud included major celebrities and monetary establishments. But in addition they included charities and pension funds that invested cash for individuals “working paycheck-to-paycheck who had been counting on their pension accounts for his or her retirements,” famous U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.
Madoff in March 2009 admitted stealing billions of {dollars} from his purchasers by operating his funding advisory enterprise, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, as a large Ponzi scheme. He pleaded responsible to 11 federal felonies and was sentenced to 150 years in jail.
The victims fund has collected about $2.2 billion via a civil forfeiture recovery from the property of Jeffrey Picower, the late Madoff investor and prime beneficiary of the scheme.
An further $1.7 billion got here in 2014 from JPMorgan Chase, the financial institution Madoff used to run his Ponzi scheme, as a part of a deferred prosecution settlement with the DOJ.
The relaxation got here from “a civil forfeiture motion towards investor Carl Shapiro and his household, and from civil and prison forfeiture actions towards Madoff, Peter B. Madoff, and their co-conspirators,” the DOJ stated in Monday’s launch.