BUSINESS BRIEFING / FRAUD

Bernard L. Madoff’s victims have so far received $530 million in compensation -- a record for a securities industry group providing the money, but only a fraction of what they lost in the financier’s Ponzi scheme.

The total being paid by the Securities Investors Protection Corp. was announced in a briefing about the ongoing liquidation of Madoff’s assets and the processing of thousands of claims from burned investors.

In the same briefing, court-appointed trustee Irving Picard said he had identified $21.2 billion in losses in about 2,300 customer accounts. He said he had approved $4.4 billion in claims and found about $1.5 billion in assets that will help cover a portion of them.