http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzmado195970544dec19,0,6848924.story
Securities Investor Protection Corp. officials say the books of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities Llc are in complete disarray and could take six months or more to piece together.
But that may be too late for Ronnie Ambrosino, who was a millionaire until a week ago. She is among the long list of investors whose fortunes were said to be wiped out by Bernard Madoff's alleged $50-billion Ponzi scheme.
Like them, with bills piling up and her bank account vanishing, she's left hoping for a bailout that might never come.
She plans to sue Madoff, but that could take years to work through the courts and yield little in the end. Her best hope to recoup some of her money is from the SIPC, an industry-funded organization set up by the government to protect investors from fraud.
But, here's the problem: SIPC does not have enough money to pay out all the claims that are sure to come from one of the biggest fraud cases ever to hit Wall Street. Securities attorneys say the organization has a reputation of being tough to squeeze money from, and each investor is only entitled to a maximum payout of $500,000 if a claim is approved.
"It feels like I'm drowning and someone is saying, 'We're going to save you, but we have to build the boat first,'" said Ambrosino, 55, who had $1.6-million invested with Madoff. "We can't wait for SIPC to go through all the papers."
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