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Where's the Money, Bernie?
By Mary Papenfuss
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Posted Jun 29, 09 4:21 AM CDT
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(Newser)
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Investigators have only recovered $1.2 billion of the $13.2 billion bilked from investors by Bernard Madoff since 1995, reports the Wall Street Journal. Eligible victims may be compensated up to $500,000 by the Securities Investor Protection Corp., but the rest will have to come from whatever investigators can find. Trustees say Madoff hasn't provided "meaningful cooperation" to help them locate the vanished loot.
Victims may have to be satisfied largely with a hefty sentence. Madoff will be sentenced today in Manhattan, and many want to see him sent to prison for life. Several investors lost a lifetime of savings squirreled away through years of hard work. "It pains me to remember my physician husband getting up in the middle of the night and going into the hospital to save someone's life so that Bernie Madoff could buy his wife a Cartier watch," one woman wrote the trial judge.