[classicman]

Oh and then the story with him starts to unravel.

Did Madoff Buy Any Stock?

Disgraced money manager Bernard L. Madoff might not have used any of his clients' billions of dollars to buy any securities for 13 years, according to the man tasked with finding the former Nasdaq chairman's remaining funds.
"For some substantial period, perhaps as much as 13 years, no securities were purchased in client accounts," Picard said.

So what does that mean for duped investors in Madoff's suspected $50 billion Ponzi scheme?

Picard said he has been able to recover roughly $650 million so far from Madoff's holdings, including funds in foreign and domestic accounts. Investors can also apply to collect up to $500,000 from the federal Securities Investor Protection Corp., which controls a type of reimbursement fund.

But of the $23 billion in losses reported by investors so far in mid-December, more than half came from those who invested in Madoff through feeder funds, Time magazine noted. Those types of investors aren't typically eligible for the federal securities insurance program.

(Picard said today that 2,350 claims have been processed so far and they expect the number of claims to double, The Associated Press reports. If the claims doubled and each investor got an equal share of the $650 million collected so far, it would work out to $138,300 per claimant.)