NEW YORK — A US hedge fund, Fairfield Greenwich, has been charged with fraud for pumping nearly $7bn (£4.8bn) of its clients’ money into Bernard Madoff’s corrupt investment empire with ‘total disregard’ for any checks on the renegade financier’s activities. The action, by the Massachusetts securities regulator, is the first to be taken against any of the so-called ‘feeder funds’ said to have channelled billions of dollars in the direction of Madoff, who was jailed last month. In Florida, federal marshals impounded Madoff’s $7m yacht at a mooring in Palm Beach. Television pictures showed officials clambering over the pristine 17-metre (55ft) vessel, searching its cabin and sticking up notices saying ‘US marshals – no trespassing’. The Fairfield Greenwich hedge fund caught up in the scandal is run by Walter Noel, a high-profile New York society figure whose glamorous family was once described by Vanity Fair magazine as ‘shoring up the virtues of a nearly extinct aristocracy’. Charges filed by Massachusetts’ secretary of state, William Galvin, said 95% of the firm’s $7.2bn Sentry fund was invested with Madoff, who admitted in court last month that he had barely done any genuine trading for nearly 20 years. Through […]