Irving Picard, the lawyer seeking to recover money invested with alleged swindler Bernard Madoff, may take more than five years to pay all customers of the man accused of a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, Bloomberg reported.
The 67-year-old Picard is tackling the most complex fraud in the four-decade history of the Securities Investor Protection Corp., the government-backed corporation that hired him, SIPC President Stephen Harbeck said.
Picard was named trustee of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC on Dec. 15, four days after prosecutors said Madoff confessed to the crime. Picard was told to liquidate the brokerage, find assets and distribute them to Madoff's customers.
"This is completely different than anything we've experienced before," said Harbeck, who described Picard as the liquidation's "fiduciary, administrator and decision-maker." SIPC was created in 1970 to cover losses when brokerages fail.
Picard and lawyers from his firm, Baker Hostetler LLP, are reviewing records with the help of ex-employees at Madoff's offices in Manhattan, a person familiar with the case said. Judges gave Picard power to seize assets and records, demand documents, summon witnesses and enter Madoff's residences around the world, including the apartment where he's under house arrest.
U.S. District Judge Lawrence McKenna ordered Madoff as a condition of bail in his fraud case to give Picard access to family homes in New York City; Montauk, New York; Palm Beach, Florida, and Cap d'Antibes on the French Riviera.
"Sometimes these days, from what I see in the papers, the most valuable piece of property that individuals have are works of art" that "tend to be on the wall," the judge said.