A U.S. federal judge ordered Friday that disgraced financier Bernard Madoff must forfeit all his rights to assets totaling 170 billion U.S. dollars.

In an agreement with prosecutors approved by District Judge Denny Chin, Madoff must give up his interests in all property, or 170 billion dollars, the amount prosecutors said flowed through the principal account of his decades-long fraud.

Madoff’s properties to be sold include a 7 million-dollar apartment in Manhattan, an 11-million-dollar house in Palm Beach, Florida, and a 3-million-dollar home in Montauk on New York’s Long Island. Other assets listed include expensive boats and cars.

According to Friday’s order, the financier’s wife, Ruth Madoff, must also forfeit her interests in all property, including more than 80 million dollars of property to which she had claimed was hers.

Madoff, 71, is former non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange who was convicted of operating a Ponzi scheme that has been called the largest investor fraud ever committed by a single person.

He pleaded guilty in March to charges that his secretive investment advisory operation was a multibillion-dollar scam. Madoff faces spending the rest of his life in prison when he is sentenced Monday.

VNN/Xinhuanet