Jeffry M. Picower died a very rich man last month in part because of returns on his investments with Ponzi scheme operator Bernard L. Madoff.
And now at least $2.4 billion of his estate, and perhaps as much as $7 billion, will go into the pool of money to be divided among those who lost money to Madoff.
William D. Zabel, a lawyer for the Picower family, told The New York Times that negotiations over the exact amount of payback are ongoing.
Irving H. Picard, the trustee acting on behalf of Madoff’s victims, had asked Picower and his wife, Barbara, to return $7 billion received from Madoff over decades.
Zabel asserts that the payback should be limited to slightly less than $2.4 billion, the amount the Picowers withdrew in the last six years.
“A fair and generous settlement with the Madoff trustee,” would still leave “hundreds of millions of dollars” in the Picower estate, Zabel said.
The bulk of that money, according to Picower’s will, would go toward establishing a new charitable foundation that would contribute to medical research and other causes that the Picowers had supported.
In a statement, Barbara Picower said that her husband “was determined that we would put Madoff behind us, reclaim our good name and reverse the damage Madoff’s fraud had, not only upon our lives, but upon the many deserving institutions and people we were blessed to support.”
That foundation would take the place of the Picower Foundation, a charitable venture that closed at the end of last year as all of its money disappeared with the collapse of the Madoff scheme.
Picower drowned at age 67 on Oct. 25 after he suffered a heart attack while swimming at his home in Florida.
His will, which was signed on Oct. 15, was filed Tuesday in a New York probate court.
Picower left $200 million to his wife, $100 million of that in a trust. He also left $25 million to his daughter, Gabrielle, and $10 million in a trust for his personal assistant, April Freilich.
According to the Times, Picower also left $200,000 in trust to a niece who is the daughter of Michael Bienes.
Bienes, who had been married to Picower’s sister, once was an employee in an accounting firm run by Madoff’s father-in-law.
Later, Bienes was a partner in an investment firm that steered money to Madoff. Regulators ended that arrangement in 1992.
In his will, Picower also called for a $25 million first-year grant to the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The will also designates $1 million each for the New York Public Library, the Nurse-Family Partnership and the Harlem Children’s Zone.
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