Do your best, and give us everything you can. Many indirect investors do not know the account number at Madoff Securities where their money ended up, and that is not a bar to filing. However, if you do know the account number it will facilitate our review.

In general, we will work with all claimants once we have a claim on file, even if some account information or other documentation is missing. However, this does not alter your responsibility to provide us with documentation demonstrating that your funds actually ended up in Madoff Securities, and the amount of your net investment loss.

If you invested in Madoff Securities through a feeder fund, bank commingled account or similar pooled investment program, we would like you to provide a copy of the monthly statements FROM THAT ENTITY OR ITS CUSTODIAN that document every deposit/purchase and withdrawal/sale that ultimately flowed to or from Madoff Securities. We ALSO need you to provide us with the monthly statement that is dated closest to December 11, 2008. Even if your last investment or withdrawal was earlier than that, your statements from banks or others through which you invested – particularly the final statement – will help us work with you to document the absence of withdrawals. The statements should show both your name and account number.

If you have copies of your monthly statements from the beginning of your investments, you should include copies of all of these statements. Please send copies, but not originals, of your documentation. Demonstrating how much you withdrew from your investment, and that you did not make any other withdrawals, will be one of the most challenging tasks for an indirect investor.

We are sorry for any confusion. We have tried to make the requirements clear and understandable, but there were so many different forms and structures used to collect investor cash that your own experience may not exactly match examples we give. Our overall goal is trying to learn as much as possible about your investment, and how it found its way into Madoff Securities.

Section 1A of Form IND is all about the CLAIMANT. The request at the top for “Account Information” refers to where your money eventually ended up when it got to Madoff Securities. However, if you do not know this Madoff Securities account number, leave it blank.

Section IB of Form IND is all about the POOLED ENTITY through which you invested, such as the feeder fund or a bank commingled account. The account numbers, addresses, contact information and other information requested in this section refer to the pooled investment vehicle and its personnel (or its liquidator or other representative if no longer in existence). If you do not have any of this information, you should still file the Form, but please try to tell us anything that would be helpful in understanding the fund through which you invested.

If you invested in a feeder fund but your investment was made through a custodian bank, then we would like to get information on both entities and any relevant accounts. If your monthly statements come from a custodian bank or similar institution, then we definitely need information concerning that account. However, we also need information on the specific feeder fund that initially received your money. Where there are a series of feeder funds the situation becomes even more complex, and Section III of Form IND requests information on any such situation. So, please give us as much information as you have.

Absolutely. We never intended to suggest that the program is limited to American citizens. Any victim of the fraud at Madoff Securities is potentially eligible to recover, without limitation as to geography or nationality. In our eyes, a victim is a victim no matter where they lived.

No. A pooled vehicle is the entity through which an indirect investor placed his or her investment funds into Madoff, directly or indirectly. It is not a group established after the fact for purposes of filing claims.

The MVF program is focused on claims from individual investors, not “group claims”. Every claim must ultimately be reviewed, verified and signed by the real investor, not an advisor, nominee or other representative. Claims filed by nominees with unnamed principals will not be accepted.

No and no. There are not any firms with a special relationship to the claims process. Investors willing to take the time can easily complete the process themselves, though we do not wish to discourage anyone from using advisors if they feel it is in their interest to do so. Ultimately your claim will be judged entirely on its own merits based on the facts of your individual investment. The decision on whether or not to use an advisor, and if so which one, is purely a matter for each former investor.

Such entities can include:

• A fund (with or without legal structure)
• An investment partnership
• An insurance company holding legal title to feeder fund shares on behalf of life insurance policies
• A nominee bank in the share register holding on behalf of ultimate beneficial owners
• An asset manager who purchased feeder fund shares on behalf of investors under discretionary investment powers

Depending on the facts, any of these types of firms or individuals may have operated in a manner such that they fall within our definition of a “pool”. Where such an entity or individual has pertinent information that can assist the underlying investor in making a claim, it may file a Form PV on behalf of its investors. However, none of these entities are themselves eligible to make a claim, and the actual investor must ultimately sign the claim on his or her own behalf in order to obtain a recovery. We will also pay individual claimants directly, rather than through intermediaries. Wherever possible individual investors should complete their own Form IND, though in many cases the operator of the feeder fund or pool will have data concerning cash transfers that will prove very helpful if either furnished directly to their client or filed with MVF on Form PV.

Absolutely not. You MUST swear to the accuracy AND COMPLETENESS of your claim information. You must include all accounts that you ever held, directly or indirectly, with investments in Madoff Securities, and you must demonstrate your deposits and withdrawals of cash from the time of your first investment. In determining if your withdrawals exceeded deposits (in which case you are not eligible), the information we review must be comprehensive, not selective.

We will be matching some claims to data from the bankruptcy, so we would appreciate a supplemental sheet showing both your old address and tax ID from when you filed before, as well as your current information.

If you had a bankruptcy claim that was denied, you have to file a new claim with MVF, including supporting documentation.

First, please don’t use Form DIR unless you had a direct account with Madoff Securities. Every other actual investor should file a Form IND.

Second, as to account numbers, we are sorry for any confusion. Ultimately to make a successful claim you must show us each step in the chain of how your money made its way to Madoff. If funds were given to a custodian bank, then invested in a fund of funds, and ultimately invested in Fairfield (or Kingate, etc.), then we will need the account number (and contact if you have one) at the bank, the FoF, AND Fairfield (or Kingate, etc) if you have one. You will have to document each step in the chain, and we realize that the more levels there were in your investment chain, the more complicated it will be to assemble the documentation required for a claim. Please give us copies of all relevant account statements and attach all the supplemental sheets you need.

The percentage of investment column in the transactions table is intended for situations where investors had multiple different accounts that invested in Madoff, in different percentages. But if you don’t know what percentage of an investment in a feeder fund went into Madoff, that is perfectly fine for purposes of filing. Just give us the details and account statements that you do have.

No, absolutely not. In many cases, the managing partners of investment partnerships or feeder funds will be ineligible to recover if they received significant compensation for directing the money of others into Madoff, or if they personally withdrew more than they invested. In other cases, the administrator of a fund might be a receiver or other fiduciary with conflicting legal duties with respect to distributions.

MVF’s funds belong to the United States of America, and those funds will be allocated to specific individuals in accordance with the regulations of the U.S. Department of Justice governing distribution of forfeited assets. So, we cannot allow managers to dictate whether victims are paid the correct amount. If an individual investor wishes to receive compensation, they really need to fill out their own claim and send it to us. As the former managing partner or administrator of a partnership, we hope that you will help your investors by providing them with necessary account statements or other records to complete their individual claims.

No. To be eligible, you must have invested funds that ultimately belonged to you into Madoff Securities, either directly or through another entity. If you made a loan to another entity, you didn’t make an investment of your own funds into Madoff.

We hope you will do so. We try to cover situations that reflect actual questions we are being asked by multiple potential victims. By reading the FAQs, you will get answers faster than through individual inquiries.