Just How Many Billions Did Madoff Lose?

Yeah, no matter how you count it, it's arguably the biggest investment fraud in history. But I'm still wondering about the $50 billion number that's getting attached to the Madoff Ponzi scheme. "$50 billion" seems to come from ... well, Madoff himself. It's what in his come-to-Jesus moment of breakdown he told his sons he'd lost. But the sons seemed to think the money that had disappeared added up to about $17 billion. Which number will turn out to be right? The only possible answer right now is "Who knows?" But given the list of losses out there so far, I'm leaning toward the lower, $17 billion figure. The structure of the thing's complicated, and I suspect that some of the individual investor losses (those country club friends) were actually held in funds like Tremont and Fairfield and may be double counted. I could be wrong. But $50 billion sounds really high--that would mean that Madoff was managing, or mismanaging more money than anybody in the hedge fund world.