Bernie Madoff victims to get back 94% of losses

The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday reported that it was beginning its 10th and final round of distributing funds to the victims of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Over $131 million in this round will be distributed to roughly 23,000 people across the globe. After this final round of disbursements, the U.S. government will have paid back about 40,000 people roughly 94% of the losses they incurred because of Madoff’s scheme, the DOJ said.

Where is this money coming from? The funds the department is using to pay back the victims come from a pot of forfeited assets that totaled more than $4 billion, the DOJ said. One of Madoff’s associates forfeited roughly $2.2 billion, while JPMorgan Chase Bank forfeited roughly $1.7 billion more as part of a deferred prosecution agreement. Other funds were collected through civil actions against Madoff and some of his other associates.

Who was Bernie Madoff and what did he do? In 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal charges accusing him of using his position as the chairman of an investment firm to steal billions of dollars from his clients, the DOJ said. In doing so, he admitted that he converted the business, which was founded in the 1960s, into the world’s largest Ponzi scheme, the DOJ said. He died in 2021 at age 82 while serving a prison sentence.

Dig deeper: Read this report from the WORLD archives about Bernie Madoff’s death in 2021.