U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff told the trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff’s firm to explain why investor James Greiff shouldn’t keep money he says he took from the Ponzi scheme “in good faith.” The trustee, Irving Picard, has sued about 5,000 investors who, he conceded, didn’t know of the fraud, according to Helen Chaitman, a lawyer for Greiff. Picard has said he did so because it’s “equitable” to take back fictitious profits to pay investors who lost money. Read San Francisco Chronicle report [...]

Bernard L. Madoff’s family would keep about $82 million of “other investors’ money” under a ruling that limited a bankruptcy trustee to claiming from the owners of the New York Mets only two years of withdrawals from the Ponzi scheme, according to a court filing. Read Bloomberg Businessweek report [...]

Barbara Walters told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Thursday that she interviewed Madoff for two hours at the prison in Butner, N.C., where he’s serving a 150-year sentence. No cameras were allowed in the prison. Walters said Madoff told her he thought about suicide before being sent to prison. But since he’s been there, he no longer thinks about it. Read Associated Press report [...]

In the only interview Ruth Madoff has given about her husband’s crimes, she tells Morley Safer she and Bernard were so distraught over the burden of those crimes that they attempted suicide together. Safer also speaks to Madoff’s son, Andrew, for a story that will provide the first inside account from the immediate family of the man who stole billions of dollars. The report will air on “60 Minutes,” Sunday, Oct. 30 at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Read CBS News report here. [...]

Convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff was forced to “let … go” of his wife almost a year ago and is wracked by “horrible nightmares” as he sits in a North Carolina prison, he told ABC News’ Barbara Walters in an exclusive interview. Though he said he “can live with” the anger of people he defrauded out of billions of dollars and he is adjusting to the rhythms of life in prison, even at 73 years old, he is troubled by anger and turmoil within his own family. Click here for ABC news report and [...]

Hot on the heels of the newly published insider memoir on Bernie Madoff’s downfall comes news that HBO’s planned movie on the disgraced financier is going ahead. Deadline Hollywood reports that HBO has finally found itself a screenwriter for an adaptation of New York Times financial writer Diane Henriques’ bestselling account of the jailed investor’s fraud, The Wizard Of Lies: Bernie Madoff And The Death Of Trust. John Burnham Schwartz, author and screenwriter of the acclaimed Reservation Road, will adapt Henriques’ book for TV. Read more on Forbes [...]

A New Jersey businessman and philanthropist has won a $7 million arbitration award against J. Ezra Merkin (pictured), a money manager who has been accused by investors of funneling more than $2 billion to convicted Ponzi scheme operator Bernard Madoff. Read more in the Wall Street Journal here. [...]