Bernard Madoff victims to receive more money, 12 years after his arrest

Victims of Bernie Madoff, the mastermind behind the worst financial scam in history, will receive $488 million in additional payments through a victim fund, the US Justice Department has said.

According to Reuters, overseers of two programmes to compensate victims of Madoff's Ponzi scheme have announced $679 million of new payouts.

The Madoff Victim Fund will disburse payments to more than 30,000 people around the world who were cheated out of their investments by the crooked financier between the 1970s and 2000s, the Department of Justice said in a statement on Thursday.

Following the payouts, the government will have sent close to $3.2 billion to nearly 37,000 victims from a $4.05 billion fund set up in 2013, while Picard will have sent $14.1 billion to Madoff customers he has estimated lost $17.5 billion.

The repayment funds are obliged to return$4.05 billion to victims of Madoff, whose financial scams were exposed in late 2008.

The 82-year-old was sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009 for running the pyramid-style scheme, which was estimated to be worth between $25 billion and $63 billion, depending on whether interest is included in the calculation.

New Yorker Madoff never invested a single cent of the money the scheme's clients trusted him with, instead using money from new investors to pay older ones.

He is currently serving his sentence in a federal medical prison in North Carolina. He requested to be released earlier this year but in June his petition was denied by the same judge who sentenced him more than a decade ago.

These victim restitution funds are separate from the payments made by Irving Picard, the lawyer who recovered and returned billions of dollars in victim investments.

The government fund is managed by former US Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Richard Breeden, and comes mainly from settlements with Madoff's former bank JPMorgan Chase & Co and the estate of former Madoff investor Jeffry Picower.

(with inputs)