Picard

Bankruptcy Judge Burton Lifland has upheld the Madoff trustee’s method of calculating net equity claims against the Madoff estate, dashing the hopes of investors who sought to rely on the false documents that Madoff had sent to them. 

An excellent summary of yesterday’s bankruptcy court hearing in the Madoff case by Noeleen Walder for the New York Law Journal is available online, and required reading for anyone interested in keeping track of the arguments. 

The Law Journal article is available

This morning, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Burton Lifland will be holding a hearing that could have a relatively significant impact on the amount to be recovered by victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. The bankruptcy court will be deciding what would seem to be a rather straightforward question: how big was this huge financial fraud?

Thousands of hours to unravel the Madoff mess? That’s not hard to understand. But then, when the hours are multiplied by a lawyer’s hourly rate, the numbers can get pretty big pretty quickly. And so it’s not hard to understand how New York Bankruptcy Judge Burton Lifland approved a payment of about

Any lingering thoughts that anyone may have had that the SEC would propose valuing customer claims against Madoff using a different standard than advocated by Madoff bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard and SIPC were dashed today, when the SEC’s Deputy Solicitor, Michael A. Conley, testified today before the Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises Subcommittee of the House of Representatives.

The issue is this: 

Here’s the latest information, as of December 8, from Madoff Bankruptcy Trustee Irving Picard:

Allowed Claims: 1,647
Denied Claims: 9,916
Amount of Allowed Claims: $4,692,268,913.48
Amount of SIPC Coverage Committed: $561,341,269.77
Amount by Which Allowed Claims Exceed SIPC Protection: $4,130,927,643.71

A jumble of a New York Times article this morning paints Stephen P. Harbeck, the head of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation and the person, with bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard, in charge of sorting out the Madoff mess, as being “under attack.” Heavens, Harbeck’s gained 10 pounds this year because he doesn’t have the time to exercise! 

The trustee for the liquidation of Bernard Madoff’s investment company, Irving Picard, today provided the most up-to-date analysis yet of the losses associated with Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme, and the news was not good. According to Picard, over the life of Madoff’s company, there were 8,095 customer accounts, of which 4,903 were action on December 11, 2008.

Madoff trustee Irving Picard has filed two documents of note today: one is a complaint against four Madoff relatives (two sons, brother, niece) who allegedly were “completely derelict” in performing their duties, seeking to recover about $200 million, and the other is a request that the court freeze the assets of Stanley Chais.

More to follow….

Many of the victims of the Madoff Ponzi scheme will be setting their TIVO to record “60 Minutes” tomorrow night, as Yom Kippur begins. The reason: Madoff trustee Irving Picard and his chief counsel David Sheehan will be speaking with Morley Safer in their first television interview.