Madoff Trustee Finds $950 Million

The trustee combing though the wreckage of Madoff Investments LLC, the asset management firm run by admitted fraudster Bernard Madoff, told a federal judge today that he'd tracked down $950 million in cash and securities that could be returned to investors.

The trustee, Irving Picard, told U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Burton Lifland that $111.4 million in cash has been rescued from financial institutions, and roughly $300 million in securities -- though the exact worth is yet to be determined.

That comes atop $534.9 million that J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Bank of New York Mellon Corp. announced last week that they would wire from Madoff's defunct firm to Picard.

Investors have a deadline of July 2 to put in a claim for lost investments.

At the same time, Representative Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania, chairman of a House subcommittee overseeing capital markets, told SEC officials that their agency is resistant to an investigation of its failure to discover the fraud, which Madoff himself has allegedly said could cost investors as much as $50 billion.

Kanjorski said that the SEC's lack of cooperation is, "an abuse of authority." The SEC meanwhile asserted that it's unable answer the questions at this time due to its own internal investigation of the case.

by Joan Magee