Lawyers and other professionals tasked with tracking down the money Madoff stole and returning it to investors have earned more than $820 million to date in the 5-year old case and this week will head to bankruptcy court to request payment of millions of dollars more, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Trustee Irving Picard, an attorney with Baker & Hostetler LLP, is requesting $31.5 million in fees and $810,000 in expenses for the nearly 82,000 hours work that he and his firm performed between May 1 and July 31, a request the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan will take up Thursday. According to Mr. Picard, “no single document” can adequately capture all the “hundreds of thousands of hours” of work that his firm and others have put in over the past five years. “Given the unprecedented fraud perpetrated by Madoff, the issues presented by this liquidation are complex, discovery is wide-ranging, and the litigation that has ensued is hotly contested,” his attorneys wrote in court papers filed last month. “All of this requires an enormous effort by the trustee and his counsel for the benefit of the victims.”
