VICTIMS: INCREASE SIPC $$

A New York lawyer, who lost her entire life savings to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, is calling for the Securities Investor Protection Corp. to raise the maximum account balance covered by its insurance to $1.6 million.

SIPC now reimburses account holders slammed by investment fraud or other wrongdoing for accounts up to $500,000 in securities or $100,000 of cash.

That amount was set in 1978 and needs to be increased, said the lawyer, Helen Chaitman, who also represents a group of 350 victims of Madoff. The insurance amount is funded by a $150 annual premium paid by registered brokers.

Chaitman recently wrote a 35-page letter to Mary Schapiro, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission asking for support in raising the limit – to be funded by steeper premiums.

On Friday, two Congressmen joined Chaitman’s campaign to have Madoff trustee Irving Picard base SIPC compensation levels on the amount of securities listed in investors’ last Madoff statement.Picard has said he will base compensation in investors’ initial investment — while a SIPC lawyer said compensation should be linked to what securities investors were told they owned. The difference in compensation could be hundreds of thousands of dollars.”These conflicting statements have caused great confusion for the victims of the Madoff fraud,” the Congressmen wrote.