Madoff investors get $7.2bn boost
The trustee recovering money for Bernard Madoff’s cheated investors has reached a $7.2bn settlement with the estate of a Florida philanthropist who had been the single-largest beneficiary of the fraud.
The settlement with the estate of Jeffry Picower was detailed today in Manhattan court papers.
US lawyer Preet Bharara called it “a truly historic settlement” and a “game changer for Madoff’s victims”.
Barbara Picower, representing her late husband’s estate, entered into the agreement with the US lawyer’s office.
She said in a statement that her husband was “in no way complicit” with Madoff’s fraud. She said the estate would “return every penny received” through Madoff investments.
Picower drowned after suffering a heart attack in the swimming pool of his Florida mansion in 2009.
Madoff, the disgraced financier, is serving a 150-year sentence after confessing to the biggest investment fraud in US history, a decades-long Ponzi scheme that took billions from investors.
His eldest son Mark Madoff, 46, hanged himself last week on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest.
