Bernie Madoff got 150 years and I believe most (a lot of?) people got their money back. If being rich and powerful buys you "justice", where did Bernie fail?
On average people got 70% of their money back I believe. However the story is way more complicated than that.
Most Madoff investors put their money in decades before, saw 20+ years of growth, and took out dividends over those years. Most investors were pensioners living off their dividends.
When the team came in to clear up the mess at the end, they redistributed the money according to pay-ins and pay-outs. So, imagine you put $1m into the fund in 1985, took $100k out per year, and in 2005, 20 years later, still had >$1m in the fund. In ~2010, the restructuring team would sue you for $1m because you had taken out $2m after putting in only $1m. But you don't have that money, all you've got is a house and a reasonable yearly salary. Unfortunately many people lost their houses and other assets because they had taken out more than their original contribution over the >20 year period.
Even if you didn't take anything out, people bet the rest of their financial lives on the fact that their initial contribution had gone up. Only counting for inflation, getting back their initial investment would be a terrible financial outcome, but accounting for what they reasonably thought they had, this would still be ruinous.
This is all why FTX saying people might get back their money is a terribly misleading statement.
On average people got 70% of their money back I believe. However the story is way more complicated than that.
Most Madoff investors put their money in decades before, saw 20+ years of growth, and took out dividends over those years. Most investors were pensioners living off their dividends.
When the team came in to clear up the mess at the end, they redistributed the money according to pay-ins and pay-outs. So, imagine you put $1m into the fund in 1985, took $100k out per year, and in 2005, 20 years later, still had >$1m in the fund. In ~2010, the restructuring team would sue you for $1m because you had taken out $2m after putting in only $1m. But you don't have that money, all you've got is a house and a reasonable yearly salary. Unfortunately many people lost their houses and other assets because they had taken out more than their original contribution over the >20 year period.
Even if you didn't take anything out, people bet the rest of their financial lives on the fact that their initial contribution had gone up. Only counting for inflation, getting back their initial investment would be a terrible financial outcome, but accounting for what they reasonably thought they had, this would still be ruinous.
This is all why FTX saying people might get back their money is a terribly misleading statement.