WSJ: Bernard Madoff Investors to Receive Another Payout

WSJ Blog:

Bernard Madoff Investors to Receive Another Payout

Total recoveries reach nearly $9.5 billion

 By Jacqueline Palank

http://blogs.wsj.com/bankruptcy/2016/06/16/bernard-madoff-investors-to-receive-another-payout/

Bernard Madoff’s cheated investors will receive another multimillion-dollar payout, bringing their total recoveries since the collapse of his Ponzi scheme to nearly $9.5 billion.
Judge Stuart M. Bernstein of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan on Wednesday authorized the seventh payout to investors in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, court papers show.
The judge’s order means liquidation trustee Irving Picard can mail out checks worth $171 million to investors, expected for mid-July, according to a statement. Another $76 million will be held in reserve for future distribution.

Irving Picard, seated in court (far right) while Judge Bernstein's approves the 171 million dollar payout. The latest distribution will bring total investor recoveries to about $9.45 billion of more than $17 billion in stolen principal. Mr. Picard has been leading efforts to track down stolen funds since shortly after the collapse of Mr. Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme in December 2008. He has recovered more than $11 billion, but some of those funds haven’t yet been paid out to investors. And in court papers, Mr. Picard says he “anticipates recovering additional assets through litigation and settlements. ( click on image to see larger)

The most recent distribution, made last December, saw $1.2 billion paid out to investors. Prior distributions have fallen between $400 million and $5 billion, court papers show.
Paving the way for the latest round of distributions are a number of settlement payments that Mr. Picard has collected in recent months. For instance, Madoff investor Vizcaya Partners Ltd. paid nearly $25 million to settle litigation seeking the return of false profits it received during the course of the Ponzi scheme.