The Fallout From Madoff's Fraud Includes an Ironic Twist for Investors

  • Courts say investing from offshore keeps the trustee away
  • Rulings make it easier for ‘people to benefit from cheating’

Bernard Madoff is escorted into Federal court in New York, on March. 12, 2009.

Photographer: Jin Lee/Bloomberg
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The legal fallout from Bernard Madoff’s epic fraud includes an ironic twist: a road map for investors wanting to hold on to profits that seem too good to be true.

In the eight years since Madoff’s arrest, a series of court decisions have favored investors who profited from the scam, damping the hopes of trustee Irving Picard to return more to Madoff’s victims who lost $17.5 billion in principal, legal experts say. At the core of the disputes is how far Picard can go to make the Ponzi scheme’s investors whole.