Madoff Investor Merkin Agrees to Pay Victims $280 Million

• About $12.9 billion has been recovered by the N.Y. trustee • Merkin was one of Madoff’s earliest ’feeder fund’ investors

Almost a decade afterBernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme collapsed, the trustee unwinding his fraud struck another settlement with one of the con man’s earliest investors -- a $280 million deal with the hedge-fund operator and philanthropistJ. Ezra Merkin.The accord, announced Wednesday, allows Merkin to avoid what would have been the first major trial in a lawsuit by the trustee since the unraveling of Madoff’s fraud in 2008 wiped out $17.5 billion in principal for thousands of investors.

Merkin, who met ...