$39M from vic fund to ‘master’
THE LONE big-bucks beneficiary of the Madoff Victim Fund so far is the man brought in to run the program.
A Freedom of Information Act filing revealed the special master hired to steer $4 billion in compensation to Bernard Madoff’s marks has enjoyed a $38.8 million payday — without giving a penny to burned investors.
Fund head Richard Breeden, a former chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, was paid directly with victim fund money since taking the position in December 2012, Bloomberg News reported.
The revelation didn’t sit well with some of those still awaiting compensation in Madoff’s unprecedented $65 billion Ponzi scheme.
“It’s very frustrating that people are making money off us like this, using money that was recovered for victims,” Food Network personality Daphne Brogdon, whose family lost $5 million in the scheme, told Bloomberg News.
“They’re eating away at whatever percentage we could possibly get.”
Madoff pleaded guilty to the massive scam in March 2009, and will die in federal prison. The 79-year-old Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institute in Butner, N.C.
Breeden’s company, RCB Services, did not respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday.
Breeden was hired to hand out roughly $2.4 billion recovered from the estate of Madoff investor Jeffry Picower, along with another $1.7 billion from a forfeiture deal with Madoff’s bank, JP Morgan Chase.
The Department of Justice brought in Breeden to facilitate the redistribution of those assets.
The $38.8 million figure covers his billings through December 2016, although the victim fund is still operating and Breeden is still earning money.
In a January message on the fund’s website, Breeden expressed optimism about giving cash back to victims this year.
“We now expect the initial distribution will take place sometime in 2017 and will be larger than we had originally expected,” wrote Breeden. The fund fielded more than 64,000 claims from victims in 135 countries, claiming a total loss of $67.8 billion. Madoff is the subject of a new HBO movie, with Robert De Niro playing the disgraced investment guru. A second, separate effort to reimburse Madoff victims has distributed more than $9 billion so far. Attorney Irving Picard (inset) is overseeing the liquidation of Madoff’s company, and has another $2.6 billion left to hand out. Although Picard could earn $1 billion for his efforts, that money comes from the Securities Investor Protection Corp. rather than from the cash earmarked for victims.