NEW YORK—A firm hired to distribute $4 billion (U.S.) to victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme has racked up $38.8 million in billings over four years. The investors are still waiting for their first cheques, though.The U.S. Justice Department disclosed its payments to Richard Breeden, the Madoff Victim Fund administrator, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Bloomberg News. Breeden’s fees, which are being paid from cash in the fund, cover his work through 2016.The delay highlights how 8½ years after Madoff’s arrest investors are still scrambling to recover money from a U.S. fund that was announced with great fanfare. Victims have recovered billions of dollars from another fund, but they have yet to be made whole.“It’s very frustrating that people are making money off us like this, using money that was recovered for victims,” said Daphne Brogdon, a Food Network personality, whose family lost about $5 million in the Madoff scam. “They’re eating away at whatever percentage we could possibly get.”Messages left with a representative of Breeden’s firm, RCB Fund Services LLC, weren’t returned. Justice Department spokeswoman Dawn Dearden declined to comment on the fees or claims process but pointed to information on the fund’s website.“We now expect that the initial distribution will take place sometime in 2017 and will be larger than we originally had anticipated,” Breeden, a former chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, wrote on the website.The compensation fund was created in December 2012 to repay thousands of Madoff’s victims after the U.S. seized $2.4 billion from the estate of one of his biggest investors, the late Jeffry Picower. The fund grew by $1.7 billion following a 2014 forfeiture deal with Madoff’s bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co., which was accused of turning a bl ...
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