Investor's death probed in widening Madoff scandal

NEW YORK: US officials pressed on with a probe into the apparent suicide of a French investment manager ruined in the alleged pyramid scheme of Wall Street titan Bernard Madoff amid more fallout from the widening scandal.

Thierry de la Villehuchet, 65, who lost more than a billion dollars in the scam, was found dead in his Manhattan office early Tuesday with pills around him and his arm slit with a box cutter, the New York City police said.

As chief executive of Access International, Villehuchet was managing some two billion euros ($ 2.79 billion) for European clients, of which three quarters had been invested with Madoff, a source close to the fund manager said.

City authorities carried out an autopsy yesterday, though results would not be ready until next week pending the outcome of laboratory tests, city officials said.

The death of the French investor came amid more revelations exposing the scale of the fraud, which has seen at least $50 billion in investments evaporate after its manager admitted to running a bogus investment scheme.

"Now blood's on Bernie's hands," read the headline of the New York Post.

Prosecutors said that Madoff, 70, has confessed to losing upwards of $50 billion over years of running a pyramid scheme in which new investors were secretly fleeced to pay returns to earlier investors- in what may be the biggest scam in the history of Wall Street.

The former chairman of the Nasdaq stock market and a mainstay of the American Jewish community, Madoff is currently free on bail of $10 million as police continue their probe.