Madoff trustee starts gathering $3.6 billion - new facts are being revealed

It is reported that Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee started to gather money from 43 new defendants to pay the victims of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme. In total they demand $3.6 billion from entities tied to Fairfield Greenwich Group which is considered to enable Bernard Madoff to run the fraud for at least 20 years.

Among the most significant defendants are Walter Noel, Jeffrey Tucker and Andres Piedrahita, the Fairfield Greenwich Group co-founders.

The trustee Irving Picard has submitted papers to the US Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan last week insisting on the fact that the company, its founding partners and two dozen affiliates, among others, represented nearly half of Madoff's reported assets under management, and that they "cannot deny their knowledge of many 'red flags' indicating the likelihood of that fraud," reports the Washington Post.

Picard has provided a 228-page complaint describing in details the relationship of Noel with Bernard Madoff which started in 1989.

"The defendants misled regulators, investors and potential investors, and generally looked the other way, focusing only on self-interest and profit," said Irving Picard.

Fairfield Greenwich has stated that Picard's filing was filled with "false, misleading and rehashed accusations."