WILMINGTON, Del. – Four people claiming they lost their life savings to Bernard Madoff’s $17 billion Ponzi scheme have asked a court federal court in Delaware to order the jailed 76-year-old investment manager to submit to formal questioning so his testimony can be preserved before he dies.
Madoff’s sworn account of the swindle may help them recover proceeds from affiliates of a “primary beneficiary” of the fraud, the late Jeffry Picower, as well as others, Susanne Stone Marshall, Adele Fox, Marsha Peshkin and Russell Oasis said in papers made public Monday in federal court in Wilmington.
Madoff, who was sentenced to 150 years in prison after a guilty plea, will turn 77 in April, has heart and kidney problems, “and has never been questioned under oath about the notorious multibillion Ponzi scheme that he created and ran,” the four investors said.
In January 2011, a U.S. bankruptcy judge approved a $7.2 billion settlement between the trustee winding down Madoff’s firm and the estate of Picower.
The trustee, Irving Picard, sued Picower in May 2009, claiming he withdrew $7.2 billion more than he invested with the firm and should have known Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme. Picower died in October 2009 at age 67, when he suffered an apparent heart attack in his swimming pool and drowned.
The investors claim they plan to file a federal lawsuit to pursue their losses after they gather testimony about the Madoff-Picower financial relationship.
“Madoff is the only person alive with detailed knowledge” of Picower’s role in the scheme, and a deposition would, for legal purposes, be “icing on a very rich cake,” according to the petition.
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