Madoff, Not Enough Fingers To Count, Not Enough Years To Pay

OK, now it's official, Bernie Madoff was declared/judged guilty and he's supposed to serve until death. But I'm still bothered by the fact that he has been able to protect those who worked with him on the scam.

"...was respected for his vision and trusted by tens of thousands of customers,..." see full text here

That means that there must have been many, many people in his business who knew that the business was a sham, one big rich card game, ponzi scheme. There's no way only he knew what was going on.

The Courts want to strip Bernie Madoff of more money, $171 billion, than it seems possible for one man to own.  My question may be stupid.

How is it possible to accurately calculate who should be compensated and by how much?

Don't forget that the totals in the accounts were bogus, because the money wasn't invested. The payments/investments the conned clients paid were used to give them all "interest payments." The clients' accounts were false, inflated.  Can a team of auditors really discover how much outside money the clients gave Madoff? And then, how do they calculate the percentages of what should be returned, and to whom?

That's all that needs to be done. No prisoner exchange, no gifts and no bribes. There's nothing to negotiate.