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Madoff Victims Want Claims Based On Fake Returns
By
Jen Chung
Published Jun 8, 2009
Modified Jun 8, 2009
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By
Jen Chung
Published Jun 8, 2009
Modified Jun 8, 2009
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The tangled web of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme has prompted some of his victims to ask a federal bankruptcy judge to recalculate their losses. The NY Times reports, "The customers say that, by law, they should be given credit for the full value of the securities shown on the last account statements they received before Mr. Madoff’s arrest in mid-December, even though they were bogus and none of the trades were ever made"—which means $64 billion would be at stake. However, "trustee, Irving H. Picard, is calculating investor losses as the difference between the total amount a customer paid into the scheme and the total amount withdrawn before it collapsed." The plaintiffs' lawyer says, "Under the trustee’s approach, thousands of people will not get a dime. That doesn’t seem fair to me." The next question is, should some plaintiffs have been suspicious of the ridiculously high returns (46%, 950%)? Cue up this December 2008 quote from a victim: "The point with him was that I always got every document. If you get all the documents, you are not suspicious."
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Bernard Madoff
high returns
madoff
Madoff victims
ponzi scheme
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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