Wife Gets $200 Million From Picower Estate

Jeffry Picower was a New York financier who benefited greatly from Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Picower died last month from drowning, which has left his widow an inheritance of around $200 million of which half is outright and the other half in trust.

His daughter will get $25 million and a longtime trusted employee April Freilich will get $10 million. However, his estate is to hand over profits made by Mr. Picower from Madoff investments which could be as much as $2 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. This amount will go into a fund of at least $20 billion to pay to Madoff’s victims.

Of this, $1.5 billion has been recovered with the rest sought to be recovered through lawsuits against those who benefited from Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. The Picower estate is amenable to paying $2 billion which it made from Madoff’s firm in the last 6 years, but not claims on billions more made in the decades earlier.