Re: $65 billion Ponzi Scheme
It is my understanding that the court appointed liquidator has brought that number under $20 billion.
Legally, they were able to claw back a lot of dividend money from long time investors who did not get completely wiped out like the most recent investors did.
Correct, the "$65 billion" figure is the total of invested amounts and false gains. Stripping out the fraudulent, non-existent gains leaves only about $18 billion, the amount investors seeking too-good-to-be-true returns gave to Madoff. Of that about $14 billion has been recovered, according to
wikipedia.