Madam Speaker, generally speaking, the law is based on the fact that if a crime is committed, the victim should be, to the greatest extent possible, put back in the position he or she would have been in had the crime not occurred. That is a principle of law that is there. Clearly, that is our wish as a society and our value statement.
The bill does include a restitution statement. It has a form here in which various things have to be described, for example, what victims were defrauded of, the amount of the loss, the evidence, et cetera. However, it is still up the court. If this was a lifestyle thing where somebody defrauded $1 million from someone, spent it or gave it away and there was nothing to take back, then it becomes: How do we get something out of nothing? In the Madoff case, there was argument that victims could go to other family members who were beneficiaries of some of the largess.
What about the people at the top end of the Ponzi scheme who got in early, like in a pyramid scheme? They would have received usurious returns on their investments. They may not have received their capital back but they may have received even more than the value of the capital. Would they not in fact be accomplices in the Ponzi scheme knowing that they were getting usurious returns and should they not be held accountable for not reporting?
I understand another value of the law is that if we become aware of a criminal violation, we have a duty to report it to those who can figure out whether there was in fact a breach. That is not covered here either, not explicitly, but I would hope that in the courts it would be taken into account that there may be many accomplices to some of these frauds.