Some of Bernard Madoff’s victims won permission to appeal a bankruptcy ruling directly to a federal appeals court that barred them from using the length of time they invested with the con man to add interest to their claims, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The victims “satisfied the criteria” for a direct appeal that skips over the district court, where bankruptcy appeals usually go first, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York ruled today. A hearing date wasn’t set. The victims seek a larger share of about $1.4 billion in cash reserves set aside for the dispute by Irving Picard, the trustee liquidating Madoff’s firm to repay thousands of investors who lost $17 billion in principal when the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme collapsed on Dec. 11, 2008.
