The court-appointed official tracking down money for Bernard Madoff's cheated investors wants to return $1.25 billion to customers who fell victim to the biggest Ponzi scheme ever, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Irving Picard, the trustee in charge of returning cash to Madoff's victims, is seeking court approval to make his sixth distribution to customers more than six years after Madoff's multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme collapsed. In a filing Wednesday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, Picard is seeking the release of most of the $1.45 billion that was held in reserve as part of the ongoing litigation with Madoff's early victims who had been seeking "time-based damages," that is inflation or interest adjustments on their claimed losses. An appellate court rejected the time-based claims in February.
