More than sixteen years after the collapse of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, the process of compensating his victims is nearing its end. The Madoff Victim Fund (MVF), set up by the U.S. Department of Justice, has been returning money to over 40,000 investors who lost their investments to the fraud. Funded with billions of dollars recovered from Madoff’s business and related parties, the MVF is now close to completing its tenth and final round of payments. For many victims, including Deminor’s 4,000 clients with a combined total of more than 400 million dollars, this means they will have recovered almost all of what they lost.
Almost Complete Recovery After Tenth and Final Round of Payments
In late 2024, the MVF began its tenth and final distribution.
This last round included payments of over 130 million dollars to more than 23,000 approved claimants. These payments raised the recovery rate to 93.71 percent of each victim’s recognised loss. In total, the MVF has now paid out over 4.3 billion dollars to more than 40,000 victims in 127 countries.
The MVF has now distributed nearly all forfeited assets it had available.
This milestone brings a close to an effort that began more than a decade ago, in November 2013, when the MVF opened its claim filing process for victims of the Madoff fraud.
When the fund made its first payments in 2017, few would have expected that victims would come so close to full recovery. Compared to most fraud cases, where recovery rates are often minimal, this result is exceptional.
“I would like to thank you once again for your efforts, because I never thought I would get so much back.” Deminor Client
Why the MVF Mattered So Much
From the start, the MVF was designed to reach a group of victims who were otherwise excluded from recovery.
While the trustee of Madoff’s investment firm “Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities” returned money to direct customers of the firm, the MVF focused on both direct and indirect victims.
Many investors, including Deminor’s 4,000 clients, had invested through feeder funds or other intermediaries and were therefore not eligible to participate in the Madoff bankruptcy proceedings as they were not direct customers.
The MVF was therefore the only way these indirect investors could seek compensation
Deminor recognised early on how important the MVF could be.
End of 2013 until early 2014, we assisted around 4,000 victims from 46 countries file their claims with the fund. These investors had lost a combined total of more than 400 million dollars. In many cases, our clients had to prove how their investments were ultimately linked to Madoff. This was often not straightforward and on many occasions required significant efforts.
When the MVF issued its first payments in 2017, many of our clients received compensation for the first time. Around 75 percent of the victims who were paid had not recovered anything before. For them, the MVF was not just helpful, it was essential. Since then, the fund has paid out nine more rounds. With each round, recovery levels increased and today most victims have recovered nearly all of their losses.
Source: https://madoffvictimfund.com/
An Ending That Brings Some Closure
Madoff’s fraud, which came to light in 2008, destroyed the lives and savings of thousands of people.
“I want to take the chance to sincerely thank you for your professional and amicable way to treat my case mainly, as from, we started to communicate directly. You understood my personal problems and handled, I believe, my matters with a special touch taking into consideration my serious situation. You have no idea how important this was. Once again THANK YOU. I will never forget this.” Deminor Client
The case has remained in the public eye through documentaries and movies. Productions like HBO’s The Wizard of Lies and Netflix’s Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street brought the story to a wider audience. These shows have helped people understand the personal toll of the fraud and why the recovery efforts have mattered so much.
The Madoff fraud is however not a movie and the MVF is not just a financial process. The Madoff scheme was the largest Ponzi fraud ever uncovered, with an estimated sixty five billion dollars in losses. Thousands of individuals, families, and institutions were affected, many of whom lost their life savings, retirement funds, or pension entitlements. The impact was devastating.
For these victims, the MVF has been about much more than just recovering money. It has also been about recognition and justice, and about holding someone accountable for the enormous harm caused. The fund acknowledged the suffering of those who had been left out of other recovery processes and gave them a path forward.
The final distribution from the MVF brings closure to a long and painful chapter. It marks the end of a journey that started with shock and disbelief, moved through years of legal and administrative work, and is now ending with the vast majority of victims recovering a large part of what they lost. Today, it offers a rare sense of justice in the aftermath of one of the most destructive financial crimes in history.
Looking Back
At Deminor, we are proud to have supported our clients throughout this journey and deeply grateful for the trust they placed in us and our services.
To ensure that more than 4,000 clients could submit their claims with the MVF in a timely and accurate manner, we mobilised nearly our entire team and brought in additional temporary staff over a period of nine months when the claim filing started in 2013. In the following 12 years, the MVF continued to engage many members of the Deminor team, particularly during the peak periods surrounding each new distribution round.
Our involvement in the MVF case is a strong reflection of our commitment to helping those who have suffered financial losses achieve justice. We worked closely with each client to guide them through the often complex claims process, to make sure that their losses were properly recognised and to ensure that the MVF received the proper feedback on requests for information.
This project clearly illustrates what Deminor stands for. We are dedicated to empowering investors to claim what is rightfully theirs, even when the process is long and challenging.
****
|
|
