Madoff Recovery Initiative

Unwinding the World’s Largest Ponzi Scheme

In December 2008, Bernie Madoff admitted that the Investment Advisory business within his firm was a Ponzi scheme, setting off his arrest and a chain reaction of events throughout the financial services world and philanthropic communities.¹
A Trustee under the Securities Investor Protection Act was appointed to liquidate Madoff’s firm and to recover the proceeds from his Ponzi scheme. ²

FTI Consulting was engaged by Irving Picard, the Trustee, and BakerHostetler, the Trustee’s counsel, to investigate the financial affairs, identify and analyze the massive amounts of financial documents and data, and provide forensic accounting analysis and expert testimony to help the Trustee recover the stolen funds.
The teams reconstructed books and records, determined amounts deposited and withdrawn from thousands of customer accounts and analyzed hundreds of millions of transactions.
With the Trustee, the teams investigated more than 16,500 claims, ultimately allowing more than 2,600.
Provided litigation support, including serving as expert witnesses, for more than 1,000 lawsuits, including two actions that reached the Supreme Court of the United States.

FTI Consulting’s work allowed the Trustee to recover more than $14.5 billion to date, representing over 80% of the stolen funds.
Recoveries from the Madoff Recovery Initiative far exceed similar efforts related to prior Ponzi schemes both in terms of dollar value and percentage of stolen funds recovered.³

Footnotes: