Madoff Scorecard, in Billions: $17.5 Lost, $10 Recovered, $1 to Do It

Unwinding the biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history hasn’t been cheap. Six years after Bernard Madoff’s fraud collapsed, the cost of liquidating his defunct investment advisory firm to repay thousands of victims has topped $1 billion, though the con man’s former customers aren’t footing the bill. The fees, paid by the industry-backed Securities Investor Protection Corp., or SIPC, which is managing the case, have financed a team of lawyers who this week surpassed $10 billion in recoveries for victims, or almost 60 percent of the principal that vanished after Madoff’s arrest in December 2008. More on Bloomberg here.