The trustee has struck similar deals with "other good faith victims of the Madoff fraud," Robert Wise, a lawyer for the Mets owners, said as Wilpon and Katz emerged from the courthouse.

Six Years

The settlement amount is equal to all of the profit withdrawn by Katz and Wilpon and a group of related individuals, family trusts and entities in the six years before Madoff's December 2008 arrest, Picard said in a statement. Rakoff had ruled that Picard could only claim two years of profits, as much as $83 million.

The main question for the trial was to have been whether the owners acted in bad faith when they withdrew $303 million of their own money from Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, the brokerage Madoff used to run his swindle.

In the settlement, the Mets owners assign to Picard their $178 million in claims against the Madoff estate. Katz and Wilpon provided personal guarantees of $29 million in case Picard is unable to collect the full $162 million agreed in the settlement.

The amount Picard collects on the claims assigned to him by the Wilpon group will be determined by the total amount Picard collects on behalf of Madoff's customers. Under the agreement, Katz and Wilpon don't have to dip into their own pockets for at least four years.

Trial Opposed

The Mets owners had opposed a jury trial and tried unsuccessfully to get the remaining claims brought by Picard dismissed after Rakoff cut them back to $386 million from $1 billion.

Picard's lawyers had said they were confident a jury would find the Major League Baseball club's owners deliberately ignored the fraud because it benefited their businesses, ranging from the team to real estate.

The Ponzi scheme cost investors an estimated $20 billion in principal, according to Picard.

Madoff, 73, pleaded guilty in 2009 to orchestrating what prosecutors called the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. He's serving a 150-year sentence in federal prison in North Carolina. Picard and his law firm, Baker & Hostetler LLP, have charged about $273 million in fees for liquidating the Madoff firm since it collapsed in December 2008.