As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovery_of_funds_from_the_Mad... says, this is the percentage of money in that later came out. With no adjustment for, for instance, inflation.

94% recovery, correcting for inflation since 2008, is a 64% recovery. And that's the best case that you put money in at the last possible moment. If your money went into the scheme in 1994 instead, that's a lot more inflation that you got to suffer.

Not to mention the downside of not having access to your money for this long.

I'm sure that a 94% recovery took a Herculean effort. But people who bought into the scheme, still had large and very real losses.

That's a tremendous success, there's loads of investments that lost more than 36%.

Yes, it’s a good thing overall. The cynic in me says if they waited another 15 years they could have announced a profit for all investors!

Still, a success story in my eyes

It’s a bit confusing because this is about the “victims” of Bernie Madoff (mainly feeder funds I guess?), which are separate from the direct creditors of Bernie Madoff and his company (which sits at ~15 distributions, and still ongoing, currently totaling $14.7b or ~71% of claims, but the first US$1.5m of any claim has been 100% satisfied).

Not sure if one could double dip or not.

https://www.madofftrustee.com/interim-reports-11.html

It’s important to consider that if you more than broke even, you could be in serious trouble returning the money. Some people used and spent the money as income. And now they have to return it back from their own assets.