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Five years after Long Island's largest-ever Ponzi scheme collapsed, its victims are still losing out - this time to attorneys' fees piling up in the arduous effort to recover swindled funds.
Since February 2009, when the U.S. Bankruptcy Court assigned attorney Ken Silverman of Jericho-based Silverman Acampora to act as bankruptcy trustee in the Chapter 7 proceedings of Agape World, victims have received about $6 million - less than 5 cents on the dollar of their validated losses of $155.5 million, according to court records.
"It's disappointing," said Bob Morris, a construction manager who lost $25,000 in the Agape scam. "I've received two payments for a couple of hundred dollars."
In that same time, the trustee has made out a lot better, with the court awarding Silverman and his firm more than $14 million in fees and expenses.
It's not that they haven't worked for it. The trustee originally received more than 5,000 claims from investors who said they lost a combined $387.2 million in the Agape World scam and has since whittled that down, throwing out about $231.7 million of those claims.
The trustee reported to the court that it has so far recovered $10.4 million...