from The New York Times:

Madoff Judge Endorses Trustee’s Rule on Losses

A federal bankruptcy judge in Manhattan has approved the fiercely disputed method used by the court-appointed trustee to calculate victim losses in Bernard L. Madoff’s enormous Ponzi scheme.

In a decision filed on Monday, Federal Bankruptcy Judge Burton R. Lifland ruled that losses should be defined as the difference between the cash paid into a Madoff account and the amount withdrawn before the fraud collapsed in mid-December 2008.

Judge Lifland rejected emotional arguments by hundreds of defrauded investors seeking to have their claims based on the balances shown on their final account statements, sent out just weeks before Mr. Madoff was arrested.