Final Madoff Fund Payout Recovers Nearly 94% of Ponzi Scheme Losses, DOJ Reports

The Department of Justice announced that the 10th and final payment from a fund set up for the victims of late Ponzi scheme king Bernie Madoff was made on Monday.

More than 23,000 victims will receive the last disbursement of $131 million. The DOJ stated that when the fund is finished, it will have distributed more than $4.3 million to over 40,000 victims across nearly 130 countries.

The department stated that this represents nearly 94% of the total estimated losses due to the scam.

Madoff’s fraud was exposed 16 years ago, and the final payment from the Madoff Victim Fund has been announced.

James Dennehy is the FBI’s assistant director for the New York Field Office.

Dennehy stated,, “These victims implicitly trust Madoff with their investment only to lose significant money to his selfish plans”.

Madoff, the former head of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, in New York, admitted to 11 felonies in March 2009. The crimes were related to the largest Ponzi scam in history, according to federal prosecutors.

Madoff received a sentence of 150 years for his fraud that spanned over four decades. He paid off customers using money raised by other customers and not investment gains, as he claimed.

He died at the age of 82 in April 2021 at a federal prison in North Carolina. This was nearly a full year after his request for compassionate release due to terminal kidney disease had been denied.

Prosecutors estimated that the total loss was $65 billion when Madoff’s fraud became public knowledge. This estimate dropped dramatically when authorities deducted the amount of phantom gains and interest Madoff’s clients were led to believe existed.

DOJ: The DOJ reported that the largest part of the fund for Madoff victims, $2.2 billion, was recovered from the estates of Jeffry Picower and now-dead Madoff investors.

JPMorgan Chase contributed another $1.7 billion.

As part of an agreement to defer prosecution with the DOJ, in January 2014. The DOJ previously stated that JPMorgan Chase, and its predecessor institutions, were the primary banks through which Madoff ran his scheme.

The rest of the victims’ fund came from a “civil forfeiture action against investor Carl Shapiro and his family and from civil and criminal forfeiture actions against Bernard L. Madoff, Peter B. Madoff, and their co-conspirators,” the DOJ said Monday.