Good news for a change: Madoff investor's widow to return money

Before his death, Jeffry M. Picower had benefited more than anyone from Bernard Madoff's fraud.

A longtime investor with the disgraced money manager, he had withdrawn more than $7 billion in other people's money before the Ponzi scheme was revealed in December 2008. And federal prosecutors, securities regulators and the Internal Revenue Service were investigating whether he was complicit in the fraud.

Twenty-four stories above Manhattan, in a law office just one block from Madoff's old headquarters, his widow, Barbara Picower, had a decision to make about what to do with the fortune that had been amassed by her husband, a financier and philanthropist.

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On Friday, Picower agreed to turn over $7.2 billion to Madoff's victims, the largest settlement to date related to the scheme.