A decade after Bernard Madoff was arrested for running the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme, the bitter fight to recoup investors’ lost billions has astounded experts and victims alike, Bloomberg News reported. While no one will ever collect the phantom profits Madoff pretended he was earning, the cash deposits by his clients have been the primary objective for Irving Picard, a New York lawyer overseeing liquidation of Madoff’s firm in bankruptcy court. So far he’s recovered $13.3 billion — about 70 percent of approved claims — by suing those who profited from the scheme, knowingly or not. And Picard has billions more in his sights. “That kind of recovery is extraordinary and atypical,” said Kathy Bazoian Phelps, a bankruptcy lawyer at Diamond McCarthy LLP in Los Angeles who isn’t involved in the case. Recoveries in Ponzi schemes range from 5 percent to 30 percent, and many victims don’t get anything, Phelps said. The scam by Madoff wiped out $19 billion that wealthy investors, charities and celebrities had entrusted to him starting as long ago as the 1970s, based on approved claims so far. For years, he doctored client accounts with phony trades and $45 billion in fake profits, until the 2008 financial crisis exposed the fraud and led to the collapse of his investment advisory firm. Read more.
For a further analysis of commercial fraud, make sure to pick up a copy of ABI’s Fraud and Forensics: Piercing Through the Deception in a Commercial Fraud Case.
