Thaindian News

June 21, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): The mother of all Ponzi schemes, Bernie Madoff, is not around now, but his deed lingers on as the millions of investors cheated of their rightful share cannot really forget it. Madoff is currently serving the 150 year sentence but the big question about the whereabouts of his money remains.

Irving Picard, the liquidator, was the man appointed by the court to investigate the issue, recover it and to return the money to all the investors who had fallen for the Madoff scam. The story was reported by Morley Safer, a 60 minutes reporter.

The liquidator, on the other hand, has found himself facing a daunting task as he now has to sue people left, right and center with the sole objective of recovering at least a part of the money. Picard, is also said to sue a few of the so called victims themselves, because he insists that they knew about the entire scheme being as unstable as a house of cards.

Picard further reveals that Madoff had lied to his investors leading them on to believe that each of them were worth $64.8 billion at least. This happened before the whole thing fell through.

Both the liquidator and his able assistant, referred to as the blood hound, more often than not, agrees that only about $36 billion had actually been invested. However, there has been evidence of half of it having been invested, but the other half is still missing. Both Picard and Sheehan, his assistant, is now trying to trace the remaining $18 billion.

Answering the reporter’s query on if Madoff’s scheme had ever been legitimate, Sheehan replied that the entire thing was based on unlawful means and Madoff would most probably have confessed to have started out as a crook and ending up as a crook as well. “That is if he had possessed the ability to speak the truth”, Sheehan added.