The final number of claims in Madoff’’s vast Ponzi scheme comes to more than 15,400, up from 8,800 claims filed by early June, according to an update provided Thursday to the federal bankruptcy court in Manhattan by Irving H. Picard, the trustee overseeing the claims and the liquidation proceeding of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.
The total [number of claims] was pushed up by a last-minute flood of applications just before a July 2 deadline, according to the new report, which was filed by Irving H. Picard… Until those last two days, the number… had remained nearly unchanged for months.
The tally adds a new metric to the enormous fraud, which was already remarkable for the amount of paper profits wiped out ($64.8 billion), the amount of cash that flowed through the Ponzi scheme since its inception ($170 billion) and the number of years the fraud continued undetected (nearly 30, according to the government prosecutors).
Mr. Picard has spent last seven months liquidating the estate of the largest Ponzi scheme ever conducted. During this period he and his team were able to recover over $1 billion. In addition, the Trustee said in his report he has filed eight avoidance actions seeking to recover over $13.7 billion in funds from various feeders funds and related parties.
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