The owners of the New York Mets baseball team have reached a revised agreement with the trustee seeking to recoup money for the victims of Bernard Madoff's fraud that gives them more time to pay up to $61 million, Reuters reported yesterday. The deal came four years after a group including brothers-in-law Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, the owners of the Mets, reached a settlement to pay a maximum of $162 million as a trial in federal court in Manhattan was set to start in a lawsuit by trustee Irving Picard. The lawsuit had accused the group of turning a blind eye to the fraud by Madoff, whose Ponzi scheme was uncovered in December 2008, a claim they denied. Wilpon and Katz had invested with Madoff for roughly 25 years. Now 78, Madoff pleaded guilty to fraud in March 2009 and is serving a 150-year prison term. Picard has recovered or reached agreements to recover roughly $11.14 billion, more than three-fifths of the $17.5 billion of principal he has said customers of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC lost. Read more.
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