Alpha Prime Fund Ltd. agreed to pay $76.5 million to the victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, boosting the total amount recovered by the trustee unwinding the con man’s firm to more than $12.8 billion.
Trustee Irving Picard announced the Alpha Prime payout on Monday. More than $10 billion has been distributed to victims of Madoff’s fraud so far. Some of his collection has been set aside pending resolution of lawsuits by victims seeking more cash than the trustee says they’re entitled to.
Picard has been liquidating Manhattan-based Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC since shortly after Madoff’s arrest in December 2008. The scam also wiped out tens of billions of dollars in fake profit that victims believed they held in their accounts.
Madoff pleaded guilty in 2009 and was sentenced to 150 years in prison for orchestrating the decades-long Ponzi scheme. Five of his top aides were convicted after a trial in 2014.
Picard, an attorney with Baker & Hostetler LLP in Manhattan, was hired by the industry-financed Securities Investor Protection Corp. to recover cash for victims shortly after Madoff’s arrest.
A hearing on the settlement is scheduled for March 28.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.