Bernard Madoff’s victims shouldn’t expect to recover all $17 billion they lost now that the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear a case involving money that went to some customers more than two years before his scam collapsed, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Irving Picard, the trustee unwinding Madoff’s firm, was seeking to reverse a December decision by the Manhattan-based U.S. Court of Appeals that shut off some older recoveries. In a June 22 order, the justices declined to take the case. They gave no explanation. The New York court had ruled that the “stockbroker defense,” also known as the safe harbor, barred lawsuits seeking to recover fictitious profits that lucky customers withdrew from Madoff’s firm as far back as six years before his Ponzi scheme was uncovered.
