Bernie Madoff, mastermind of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, was arrested almost 8 ½ years ago, but a company selected by the Department of Justice to distribute billions of recovered dollars has yet to make one payment to any victim, according to USA Today.

RCB Fund Services LLC has been charged with the responsibility of distributing roughly $4 billion to those swindled by Madoff, and while that sum is just a relative fraction of the $65 billion that went missing from Madoff Securities, it is not likely that any of the claimants sees the amount available for distribution as a figure of which to be dismissive.

The failure of RCB to distribute any funds thus far was addressed back in January by special master Richard Breeden, in a statement on the madoffvictimfund.com website. Breeden, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, wrote, in part, “We were unable to initiate our first payout in 2016 as we had hoped because of the volume and complexity of claims.”

"However, we now expect that the initial distribution will take place sometime in 2017 and will be larger than we had anticipated.”

Raising eyebrows even further, beyond the singular issue of lack of any payment so far to victims, is that Breeden’s firm has received $38.8 million so far for its work.

RCB’s inability to distribute any funds so far stands in stark contrast to the work done separately by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation on behalf of Madoff victims. The SIPC effort, led by Irving Picard, has recovered almost $12 billion on behalf of Madoff victims, and has so far distributed a little over $9 billion.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large