A US judge approved a $7.2 billion settlement on Thursday to pay former customers of the Madoff firm, the largest yet in the world-wide search for money lost in Bernard Madoff's multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. US Bankruptcy Court Judge Burton Lifland in New York made the ruling over the objections of some investors, who contested the deal between the estate of Jeffry Picower, a Madoff friend and investor, and a trustee liquidating the Madoff firm.
The trustee and the US Department of Justice announced the settlement on December 17 with Picower's wife, Barbara. Picower died of a heart attack in Florida at the age of 67 in October 2009. The objection to the settlement, the biggest since the December 2008 revelation of Madoff's decades-long fraud, was made on behalf of a putative class of investors whose claims are not recognised by the trustee, lawyer Irving Picard.