Participants in the Madoff investment scandal the receiver assigned to Madoff's Ponzi scheme, extracted a settlement from Tremont worth over one billion dollars. A $1 billion class-action federal lawsuit was filed in Colorado against Fiserv, Inc. of Brookfield, Wisconsin whose subsidiaries were custodians for pension or IRA accounts and invested with Madoff. The complaint alleges Fiserv failed "to hold and safeguard assets entrusted to it" by about 800 Madoff customers who had been told to hire Fiserv to handle their accounts with him. Fiserv is accused of breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, negligence and aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary. Fiserv sold its investment account administration
Pyramid scheme nothing more than legalized pyramid schemes. Pyramid schemes are illegal in many countries or regions including Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada , China, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Iran, the Republic of Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Nepal, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, South Africa, Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Franchise fraud is defined by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation as a pyramid scheme. The FBI