Investors may speak at Madoff hearing

NEW YORK (AP) — Bernard Madoff has yet to face the many investors he is accused of ripping off in a jaw-dropping Ponzi scheme that amounted to one of the biggest financial frauds in history.

The disgraced financier has been insulated from them in his expensive Manhattan apartment, where he has been under house arrest since December.

But on Thursday, he’s expected to enter a guilty plea in the multibillion-dollar fraud, setting up a dramatic and highly unusual confrontation with the people he is accused of cheating.

Late Friday, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin invited victims to address the court after prosecutors submitted papers noting that crime victims have the right to be “reasonably heard at any public proceeding in the district court involving release, plea, sentencing, or any parole proceeding.” Typically, victims speak at sentencing hearings, not at ones in which a guilty plea is offered.

It’s not clear how many of Mad- off’s former investors will attend the hearing. Thousands lost money, among them many charitable institutions and schools.

Authorities said Madoff told his family he had engaged in a $50 billion fraud, though they have since said investors lost far less because some of their vanished profits were fictitious from the start. The actual number is undetermined at this point; some believe it’s less than a still-staggering $20 billion.

Before his arrest, the 70-year-old former Nasdaq market chairman told an investigator there was “no innocent explanation” and he expected to go to prison, according to a criminal complaint.

There will be room at Thursday’s hearing for only so many people, time for only so many accounts. It’s likely plenty of investors will submit letters to the judge.