Reuters UK – Five months after Bernard Madoff’s massive fraud was revealed, little of his victims’ money has been found and it appears increasingly likely that the worldwide hunt for their missing billions will drag on for years.
So far, the court-appointed trustee sorting through Wall Street’s biggest investment fraud has located only about $1 billion (656 million pounds) to be distributed to defrauded customers — a fraction of the $65 billion the confessed con man’s records purported to have in nearly 7,000 client accounts when the FBI arrested him in December.
Trustee Irving Picard has signalled, however, that he is ramping up efforts to find more money, a ray of hope for victims if these funds can ever be tracked down and shared among them.
At this relatively early stage of Picard’s investigation, though, it is unclear if that is possible.