The owners of the New York Mets settled for $162 million with the court-appointed trustee in the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme on Monday, according to the federal court handling the case.
Trustee Irving Picard, who is in charge of recovering assets stolen in Madoff's pyramid-style scheme, had sued the owners -- including Saul Katz, Fred Wilpon and the holding company Sterling Equities -- for $303 million.
The settlement was announced just as jury selection was scheduled to begin.
"We believe that this is a fair and just settlement," said David Sheehan, the lead counsel at Picard's firm, Baker & Hostetler.
A spokesman for the owners of the Mets was not immediately available for comment.
The Mets owners were among thousands of investors who had invested in the Madoff's Wall Street firm, which was a front for his Ponzi scheme.
The trustee has sued hundreds of investors who allegedly profited from the scheme, even though many of them -- like the Mets owners -- deny knowing that it was a scam.
The trustee had originally sued the Mets owners for $1 billion, but Judge Jed Rakoff threw out the $700 million portion of the lawsuit last year.
Madoff was arrested in 2008 and pleaded guilty in 2009 to running the largest Ponzi scheme in history. He is currently serving a 150-year sentence in federal prison.
The trustee has recovered about half of the $17.3 billion in estimated Madoff losses.
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