Madoff Gets 150 Years; His Client Jeffry Picower Gets $5 Billion
Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison today for carrying out a $65 billion fraud. But as ProPublica’s Jake Bernstein reported last week, Madoff client Jeffry Picower likely reaped more from the scheme than Madoff himself did.
Between 1995 and 2008, Picower and his family withdrew $5.1 billion more from their Madoff accounts than they originally invested. Irving Picard, the trustee in charge of liquidating Madoff’s firm, has filed a lawsuit (PDF) against Picower and his wife to try to recover those funds and turn them over to victims of Madoff’s scheme. The complaint (PDF) says the Picowers "knew or should have known" that they were profiting from a fraud.
Between 1996 and 2007, a group of Picower trading accounts saw annual returns of more than 100 percent – when the biggest annual gain in the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 31 percent. In 1999, one account earned 950 percent.
Get Updates
Our Hottest Stories
- Donations to Scott Walker Flagged as Potential Fraud
- In Race For Better Cell Service, Men Who Climb Towers Pay With Their Lives
- Billion Dollar Bait & Switch: States Divert Foreclosure Deal Funds
- Pardon Attorney Torpedoes Plea for Presidential Mercy
- Patient Died at New York VA Hospital After Alarm Was Ignored
- Introducing the ProPublica Patient Harm Community on Facebook
- Got Student Loans? Share Your Documents With Us
- Built for a Simpler Era, OSHA Struggles When Tower Climbers Die
- Remember Stuxnet? Why the U.S. is Still Vulnerable
- Congressional Leader Calls for Investigation of the Pardon Office
- Donations to Scott Walker Flagged as Potential Fraud
- Pardon Attorney Torpedoes Plea for Presidential Mercy
- In Race For Better Cell Service, Men Who Climb Towers Pay With Their Lives
- Air Force Pilots Balk at Flying the World’s Most Expensive Fighter Jet
- Patient Died at New York VA Hospital After Alarm Was Ignored
- Watchdog Group Calls for Probe of Lobbyists Behind Congressional Trip to Taiwan
- Billion Dollar Bait & Switch: States Divert Foreclosure Deal Funds
- N.Y. Congressman Will Reimburse Costs for $22,000 Taiwan trip
- Remember Stuxnet? Why the U.S. is Still Vulnerable
- Happy Graduation! Here's The Best, Most Depressing Journalism on Student Debt
