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Victims of Bernard Madoff’s $20 billion Ponzi scheme are set to start 2021 with checks totaling more than $190 million, the latest installment in loss-compensation payments from the trustee who’s been liquidating the con man’s business for more than a decade, Bloomberg News reported. The 12th distribution in the long-running case includes more than $74 million in settlements and courtroom recoveries since the last payout in February, trustee Irving Picard said yesterday. The payouts associated with 813 accounts will average $234,631 each and will boost total victim recoveries to 69.6 percent of approved claims, the trustee said. “With our next expected distribution, we will have returned to customers almost 70 percent of the money stolen by Bernard Madoff, much more than anyone ever predicted,” Picard said. Since Madoff’s New York-based firm collapsed in December 2008, the trustee has been reimbursing victims by suing investors who made money off the fraud by withdrawing more cash from their accounts than they put in. After the next payout, the total amount returned to victims will rise to $14.1 billion, he said. A hearing on the plan is set for Jan. 20 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

A bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers is urging a U.S. regulator to shake up the receivership cleaning up after R. Allen Stanford ’s $7 billion Ponzi scheme, saying the money recovered from the fraud is insufficient, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The lawmakers asked Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton in a letter last week to consider intervening in the court-supervised receivership of Stanford International Bank, the defunct institution that carried out the fraud exposed in 2009. Stanford is serving a 110-year prison sentence in Florida after his 2012 conviction on 13 felony counts. He has petitioned several courts to free him and has published a book saying prosecutors made him a scapegoat. Liquidators have spent a decade selling assets, suing alleged beneficiaries of the Ponzi scheme and distributing the proceeds. But the amount of money recovered for victims has been insufficient, said the lawmakers, including Reps. Al Green (D-Texas), Matt Gaetz, (R-Fla.) and Cedric Richmond (D-La.). Only a fraction of the money lost in the fraud has been recovered, according to court records. “We hope you agree that it is completely unacceptable that the Stanford Ponzi scheme victims have recovered pennies on the dollar over the past 11 years,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter to Clayton. “While some of these individuals have become infirm or passed away over this time, thousands of others still await economic justice.” The lawmakers urged Mr. Clayton to shake up the receivership proceeding, including by cracking down on professional fees and possibly petitioning a federal court to replace the receiver. While the receivership had brought in more than $681 million as of April, professional fees totaled $216 million, nearly as much as the $221 million distributed to victims, according to court records.

Boris Becker, a six-time Grand Slam champion and former No. 1 ranked player, has been charged with failing to hand over trophies and medals as part of his bankruptcy filing from 2017, the BBC reported. Becker appeared in a London court on Thursday and faces a total of 28 charges, including for not turning over the hardware to pay debts. It includes Wimbledon and Australian Open trophies. Becker entered court already facing 19 charges for failure to comply with legal obligations to disclose information, per the Guardian. Nine more charges were added on Thursday alleging he hid the trophies and medals so they could not be sold. One new charge relates to hiding the 1985 Wimbledon trophy, per the Guardian. Becker was the youngest Wimbledon men’s singles champion when he won it at the age of 17 years and seven months. He was also the first German and the first unseeded winner. Another charge is for the 1989 Wimbledon trophy. He also won at Wimbledon in 1986. Becker is also accused of hiding two President’s Cups (1985, 1989), a 1988 Davis Cup gold coin and 1989 Davis Cup trophy, both Australian Open trophies (1991, 1996) and a 1992 Olympic gold medal.