The victims of Bernie Madoff’s billion-dollar Ponzi scheme will begin to see payments totaling more than $568 million according to the department of justice.

Nearly 40,000 investors fell victim to the Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC fraud scheme in the early 2000s. According to the DOJ, some of these victims will be seeing payments for the first time while others will be receiving additional payments after losing their money in what has been deemed the largest financial fraud in Wall Street history.

The Justice Department announced last week that it will begin its seventh distribution of funds to victims of the Ponzi scheme. This brings the total distribution of funds to over $3.7 billion paid out to the nearly 40,000 victims across the globe. This latest distribution will be made to 31,000 victims, with 2,600 of the victims seeing their first recovery payment. The Justice Department's Assistant Attorney General, Kenneth A. Polite Jr., commented on this latest payout sharing, “The Department’s continued efforts to ensure justice for victims of crime is demonstrated through the ongoing Madoff remission process and the billions given back to innocent victims worldwide.” The DOJ also shared that this latest payment will bring the total recovery of funds to 81.35%.

The 7th payment comes nearly half a year after Madoff passed away in prison while serving his 150-year sentence. Madoff pled guilty to 11 federal felonies on March 12th, 2009, and pleaded guilty to turning his wealth management business into the world's largest Ponzi scheme. Money from the investment was used to fund a lavish lifestyle for both Madoff and his family members.

After his sentencing, a whopping $4.05 billion U.S. fund was made available to the victims who were defrauded of their investment. Roughly $2.2 billion of that was collected from the Estate of a deceased investor, Jeffry Picower. Another $1.7 billion was collected from JPMorgan Chase Bank as part of a deferred prosecution agreement. The remaining money was collected from a civil forfeiture action that was made against another investor, Carl Shapiro, as well as a criminal and civil forfeiture action against Madoff himself, his brother Peter B. Madoff, and other co-conspirators.

In addition to payouts from this fund, trustees appointed by the court were able to recover roughly $14 billion from the estimated $17.5 billion that investors pumped into the Madoff fund. The U.S. fund handling this latest payout is separate from the payment process that is being handled by court-appointed trustee Irving Picard. The payment process handled by Picard has recovered more than $14.5 billion of the nearly $18 billion Madoff defrauded investors out of. The money recovered was the result of litigation by Picard against customers who benefited from the Madoff Ponzi scheme. Most of the $14.5 billion has already been sent out to the nearly 40,000 victims.