The wife of Jeffry Picower, the longtime Bernard Madoff investor who drowned in his pool last month, told a judge that the trustee for Madoff’s firm is “overreaching” in his $7.2 billion lawsuit against the couple.
Irving Picard, the trustee, sued the Picowers in May to help repay victims of Madoff’s multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
Picard doesn’t have enough evidence to force the return of the couple’s Madoff-related profits from as far back as 25 years ago instead of the standard six-year period used in such cases, Barbara Picower said in a Wednesday court filing.
The couple’s attorney, William Zabel, said last month that he was in settlement talks with Picard and that the proper clawback amount the trustee could seek under U.S. bankruptcy law was $2.4 billion, the amount of fake profit the Picowers withdrew in the past six years.
Bloomberg News
