Madoff Trustee Seeks Wide Power to Subpoena.

The trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of Bernard L. Madoff's trading firm has made an urgent request to the court for unusually broad authority to subpoena witnesses and documents, citing the vast scale of what is alleged to be a $50-billion Ponzi scheme. While not unprecedented, the request from the trustee, Irving H. Picard, is far from routine, and it illustrates how much Mr. Picard's burdens have expanded beyond a trustee's traditional tasks of identifying assets and selling them to satisfy claims. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]