Thousands of victims of Bernard Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme are set to receive final restitution payments, raising the percentage of total losses recovered to nearly 94%, the Justice Department announced Monday.
Over $131.4 million is being sent to more than 23,000 fraud victims globally in a 10th and final distribution from the Madoff Victim Fund, the DOJ said.
The fund has already paid out more than $4.3 billion to nearly 41,000 victims in 127 countries following the uncovering of the multibillion-dollar scheme in December 2008, the department said.
“Today’s distribution represents an unprecedented conclusion of victim compensation from civil forfeiture actions related to the Madoff scheme with more than $4 billion repaid to over 40,000 victims,” 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 significant monies to his selfish plan.”
More than half of the recovery money, or $2.2 billion, was collected from the estate of deceased Madoff investor Jeffry Picower. An additional $1.7 billion came from a settlement with JPMorgan Chase Bank, and the remaining funds came from investor Carl Shapiro, the Madoff family and their co-conspirators, the DOJ said.
Madoff headed Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities in New York and pleaded guilty in 2009 to running what prosecutors called the world’s largest Ponzi scheme. He was sentenced to 150 years in prison and died behind bars in 2021, at age 82.
The DOJ and the Madoff Victim Fund last year expressed surprise after the total recoveries passed 90%, a feat that the funds’ special master said “absolutely no one could have predicted.”
“When we started, no one knew how many Madoff victims existed, where they were, or the amount of their losses,” special master Richard Breeden, who previously served as chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said in a statement recognizing that milestone.
“It has been a saga of endless hard work by people at MVF and the Department of Justice, all determined to change every crime victim’s life for the better,” Breeden said. “The Department did an amazing job recovering assets from people or entities that were involved with the fraud.”
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A representative with the Madoff Victim Fund did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment Monday.