The Madoff Victim Fund controlled by the U.S. Justice Department said that it will distribute $2.4 billion in forfeitures from the Jeffry Picower estate “as fast as possible” once all eligible recipients are known, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The money is part of a $7.2 billion settlement by the widow of one of Bernard Madoff’s largest individual investors of a lawsuit accusing Picower of having known of the fraud, which robbed customers of about $17 billion in principal. A federal judge approved the settlement in March 2012 and the trustee liquidating Madoff’s bankrupt brokerage distributed his $5 billion share of the Picower money a year ago, when a former Madoff customer lost her legal bid to challenge her exclusion from the payout.
