Madoff tags four investors with blame

BUTNER, N.C., April 7 (UPI) -- Ponzi scheme operator Bernard Madoff in a prison interview in North Carolina said four large investors in his securities firm were "complicit" in the fraud.

"They were complicit, all of them, which is why they are all settling," Madoff told the Financial Times, referring to investors Jeffry Picower, Stanley Chais, Norman Levy and Carl Shapiro in an interview at the Butner federal prison in North Carolina.

Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee in the case, has sued all four of the investors who reaped enormous gains from their association with Madoff.

Picower's estate agreed to give up $7.2 billion in ill-gotten gains, while Shapiro gave up $625 million. Levy, who died last year, gave up $220 million of his earnings from Madoff investments, while the case against Chais is ongoing.

Picower died in October 2009.

All four helped Madoff find investors for his firm, which lost an estimated $65 billion of investor funds.

Madoff also said three banks -- JP Morgan & Chase, UBS and HSBC -- should have known his business was fraudulent.

"JP Morgan doesn't have a chance in hell of not coming up with a big settlement," Madoff said.

Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence after pleading guilty to 11 felony counts, including securities fraud, money laundering and perjury.

When he was arrested in 2008, Madoff at first insisted he operated the fraud entirely by himself.