Documents filed by defence lawyers estimate that Madoff and his wife, Ruth, have assets worth between $823m and $826m (£589m to £591m) including four homes, four boats, a share in a private jet and a Steinway piano. To maintain their properties, they are burning through cash at a rate of $346,757 a month.

In a filing to the US appeals court, Madoff’s lawyer, Ira Sorkin, says his client was fully co-operative with the terms of his release before judge Denny Chin jailed him on Thursday.

Sorkin says the judge’s description of Madoff as a “flight risk” is “clearly erroneous”, pointing out that he made no attempt at escaping during three months under house arrest even though he was “always cognisant of the fact that he would die in prison”.

Sorkin says Madoff and his wife have told the US government that they are “willing to relinquish many of their assets”.

Details of the couple’s wealth are unlikely to please Madoff’s victims. The financier has in effect been living off the proceeds of crime for nearly two decades, having admitted in court that he began operating his investment firm as a Ponzi scheme as far back as the early 1990s.

The couple’s flat on Manhattan’s upper east side is valued at $4m, while a house in the millionaires’ playground of the Hamptons is worth $1.58m. A Palm Beach getaway has a price tag of $2.46m and a property in the French resort of Antibes is pegged at $900,000. They keep a $7m yacht named Bull on a $1.5m boatslip near their house on the Côte d’Azur. Another boat, Sitting Bull, is worth $320,000 while a vessel in Florida described as a “Rybovich fishing boat” is valued at $2.2m.

Madoff’s lawyers say they need constant access to him so that he can help compensate his victims: “Mr Madoff’s contribution to this effort could be severely hampered, if not altogether eliminated, if he is remanded.”

Much debate has centred around what Madoff’s wife can legitimately keep. Most of the property is in her name and despite her husband’s change of fortunes, she continues to lease a BMW, has jewellery worth $2.6m and plays a $39,000 piano.
Rich list

Bernard Madoff and his wife, Ruth, have assets including:

$7m Manhattan penthouse apartment

$3m Beach residence in the Hamptons

$11m Palm Beach holiday house

$7m A Leopard yacht called Bull”

$39,000 Steinway piano

$2.6m Jewellery

$12m 50% share in a private jet

$21,717 His current account balance

$17m Her current account balance

Madoff appeals for bail and reveals wife’s huge fortune

Outside were many more, and they still represented only the tip of an iceberg that is thought to comprise thousands of Madoff victims around the globe, from retirees and celebrities to some of the richest people in the world.

Hollywood mogul Steven Spielberg, whose net worth this year was estimated at $3 billion, lost some of his philanthropic dollars to Madoff, according to a 162-page list compiled by AlixPartners, a restructuring firm tasked with helping liquidate Madoff’s investment company.

Several billionaires, as well as foundations or companies funded by or associated with billionaires, were also included. Among them: First Manhattan Co., a private investment firm founded by long-time Warren Buffett associate David Gottesman.

Gottesman, who sits on the board of Berkshire Hathaway, was worth an estimated $1.8 billion when we priced our list of the wealthiest Americans this year. Last year he was listed at $2.5 billion.

Art collector Norman Braman, 76, who made his first appearance on the Forbes 400 in 2008, with a net worth of $1.7 billion after a frothy run-up in the value of his contemporary art collection, is also among those cited in the who’s who of Madoff victims. Today, we estimate, he is worth $1.2 billion.

In December, Braman told Katie Couric of CBS News he had known Madoff for years and had invested a “considerable amount” of money with him. “I want to see him pay for what he has done to all these people,” he told Couric.

Nobel Peace Prize recipient and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel is another who has been vocal about Madoff’s betrayal, reportedly referring to him as “a crook” and “evil.” In a statement in December, the nonprofit Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity admitted to having “$15.2 million under management with Bernard Madoff Investment Securities”–an amount that represented substantially all of the foundation’s assets.

Not named directly in the February bankruptcy filing: real estate billionaire Mort Zuckerman, whose net worth has fallen from $2.3 billion to $1.5 billion in the last 12 months. He told Erin Burnett on CNBC three months ago that his charitable foundation lost $30 million via Madoff investments. Zuckerman, however, said that the money was being managed by an outside financial adviser and that he had no knowledge that the foundation was invested with Madoff until he was told after the story broke late last year.

Also not named but believed to have been affected by the Ponzi scheme were Alicia Koplowitz, who was considered Spain’s richest woman last year but lost half her fortune in the past year, and fugitive financier Marc Rich.

Other reported celebrity victims include baseball star Sandy Koufax and New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon. Actors Kevin Bacon and his wife Kyra Sedgwick, as well as John Malkovich and Zsa Zsa Gabor were also among the many believed to be defrauded.

“I thought it would end quickly, but it proved impossible,” said Madoff, before being remanded to jail and facing a possible 150-year sentence. “I am ashamed for these criminal acts. I always knew this day would come.”

Bernie Madoff’s Billionaire Victims

Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Litt today filed a one-page document in Manhattan federal court indicating the government will file an “information,” or charging document, after Madoff agrees to waive a grand jury indictment. Defendants who agree to plead guilty to an information often first waive indictment.

“Madoff is about to enter his guilty plea,” Jacob Frenkel, a former Securities and Exchange Commission attorney, said in an interview. “A criminal information is a consented- to criminal charge used to enter a guilty plea.”

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Denny Chin in New York, according to court papers.

“He intends to waive” an indictment, Madoff lawyer Dan Horwitz said in an interview today. No waiver or criminal information has been filed in court, Horwitz said, declining to comment on whether Madoff plans to enter a guilty plea.

Madoff is scheduled to appear in court on March 10 for the judge to explore whether there is a conflict of interest involving another of his lawyers, a clerk for Chin said. Madoff will next appear in court on March 12 to be arraigned on the new charges, the clerk said.

Madoff lawyer Ira Sorkin’s now-deceased father had an account with Madoff, and in 1992 Sorkin represented a Florida investment firm, Avellino & Bienes, that invested with Madoff. That issue will be the subject of the March 10 hearing.

Ponzi Scheme

Today’s court filing doesn’t indicate that Madoff, who was arrested in December for defrauding investors of billions of dollars, has yet waived an indictment. Nor does it say when prosecutors will file an information.

Madoff, 70, was arrested on Dec. 11 and charged with one count of securities fraud for running a massive Ponzi scheme that paid off old investors with money from new investors. He allegedly told investigators that his investors lost $50 billion. Madoff hasn’t formally responded to the charge.

Under the one existing charge, Madoff faces as much as 20 years in prison. He may face life imprisonment if additional charges are filed.

Madoff has been confined to his multimillion dollar apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He is free on $10 million bail, which prosecutors agreed to after his arrest. They later asked a judge to jail him. It’s likely they will again ask the judge to lock Madoff up if he pleads guilty, Frenkel said.

Plea Hearing

At a guilty plea, Madoff will have to explain how he broke the law, and Chin has authority to pose additional questions. Frenkel said it’s unlikely that the judge will question Madoff about possible accomplices “because it could affect whatever work the government is doing.”

Frenkel said Madoff appears to be aiding the government in its investigation.

“There is no question that he’s been cooperating because of both the plea to the information and because his lawyer has said as much,” Frenkel said, referring to prior comments by Sorkin that Madoff is talking to prosecutors.

Earlier this week, a judge said in court papers in a related civil suit against Madoff that his lawyers claim that Madoff’s wife, Ruth, is the sole owner of the couple’s Manhattan apartment, $45 million in bonds and $17 million in cash. These assets are “unrelated” to Bernard Madoff’s fraud scheme, the lawyer said, according to the judge.

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

Sir Allen, who disappeared from public view on Tuesday when he was accused by the SEC of an $8bn (£5.6bn) fraud, is believed to be in the Richmond area.

The SEC filed a civil case in court describing the case as a “fraud of shocking magnitude”.

He is not in custody and has not been charged with any criminal violations.

But officials from the US justice department, which handles criminal prosecutions, have made clear they are proceeding with their own investigation.

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said that FBI agents, acting at the request of the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), had served the papers on Sir Allen in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

The Texan cricket impresario is accused of luring investors with promises of improbable and unsubstantiated high returns on certificates of deposit and other investments.

The SEC needed to serve the papers to ensure that he turned in his passport and was made aware of the proceedings against him, the BBC’s Richard Lister reports from Washington.

‘Very depressed’

Stressing that Sir Allen had not been arrested, Mr Kolko said he did not know if he had actually surrendered his passport.

Giving few details, he said that agents from the FBI’s office in Richmond, Virginia, had “located and identified Stanford Financial Group chairman Allen Stanford in the Fredericksburg, Virginia area”.

The papers were served about 1345 local time (1845 GMT) on Thursday as Sir Allen sat in a car, and the authorities do not believe he had been purposely hiding from them, an unnamed law enforcement source told the Associated Press.

ABC News quoted one of the billionaire’s lobbyists, Ben Barnes, as saying that Sir Allen had been “very depressed”.

He had sought to end a federal manhunt for him by directly approaching officials at the US justice department, Mr Barnes added.

Sir Allen’s father, James Stanford, told AP in Mexia, Texas, that he hoped the allegations against his son were untrue.

“I have no earthly knowledge of it,” said the 81-year-old, listed as chairman emeritus and a director for Stanford Financial Group.

“I would be totally surprised if there would be truth to it. And disappointed, heartbroken.”

Asked what advice he would give his son, he said: “Do the right thing.”

States intervene

Earlier, Peru and Venezuela became the latest countries to intervene in local banks controlled by the Stanford group.

Peru’s securities regulator suspended local operations of the Stanford Financial Group for 30 days and Venezuela said it would take control of Stanford Bank Venezuela.

Panama, Ecuador and Antigua also took action after the accusations against Sir Allen were reported.

Regulators were hoping to calm customers worried about investments as queues of worried investors have formed at banks associated with him in the US, the Caribbean and Latin America.

A civil court judge in the US has frozen the assets of Sir Allen and those of the Stanford Group, its Antigua-based subsidiary Stanford International Bank (SIB), and another subsidiary, investment adviser Stanford Capital Management.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Agents find billionaire Stanford