Victims of
Bernard Madoff's
investment business which is a giant
Ponzi scheme in the
history will unlikely see their hard earned
money back, at least in those amounts they funded into the
scam financial pyramid. The
investigation along with the
litigation led by the
government and lawyers will
bear little
results and some experts believe that the final outcome will be similar to those in
case with
Bayou Group
hedge fund, WorldCom and Adelphia
Communications.
U.S. regulators report that Madoff who confessed to losing $50 billion provided a list of his assets. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that received the list from Madoff's lawyers last week Wednesday will not publicly disclose the information. And while investors count on that Madoff could not spent all the money Madoff property disclosed so far in court filings is worth at least $78 million, including homes, a boat, a charity and five JP Morgan Chase and Bank of New York Mellon Corp accounts.
In case with past investment scams the authorities used multiple avenues for recovering losses, such as civil lawsuits, bankruptcy court, court-ordered asset forfeiture, and also years of waiting for small returns, Madoff's business will turn out different inasmuch as in his Ponzi scheme early investors were paid off with the money of new clients. This is where the money was lost.
The government is still looking for assets related to the 2005 Bayou Group hedge fund fraud by Sam Israel, which resulted in $450 million in losses. In the collapse of Adelphia Communications Corp in 2002 that involved a $5.5 billion loss the SEC managed to recover just $530 million from founder John Rigas and his son with $455 million from Adelphia's auditor and 38 banks in 2006. WorldCom Inc investors did better with securities litigation alone, recovering $6.1 billion of an $11 billion fraud four years after the telecom company's 2002 collapse.
Source: Reuters
