NEW YORK (Reuters) The court-appointed trustee and others seeking money for Bernard Madoff’s customers were paid $318.4 million through the end of March more than the sum available to be paid out to the victims.Trustee Irving Picard said he has reached agreements to recover more than $7.6 billion, but lawsuits have tied up all but $272 million.Of the $318.4 million in fees and expenses, nearly half, $148.9 million, has gone to the law firm Baker & Hostetler LLP, where Picard works as a partner, according to a filing with the US Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Another $152.5 million has been used to pay consultants. Picard’s own fees and expenses total $3.59 million. Other fees, expenses and taxes comprised the rest. The trustee also said in the filing that he has evaluated all but five of the 16,518 claims filed by former customers of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. He said he approved roughly 15 percent of these claims, totaling $6.9 billion. Madoff, 73, pleaded guilty to running what prosecutors called a $65 billion Ponzi scheme in March 2009. He is serving a 150-year sentence in a North Carolina federal prison.Picard said he has filed more than 1,050 lawsuits to recover more than $90 billion from banks, “feeder funds” and individuals he believes improperly benefited from Madoff’s fraud.Former customers, however, have challenged Picard’s effort to recover money from people he considers “net winners” because they withdrew more money from Madoff’s firm than they deposited. Some say Picard has not been aggressive enough in settling cases against large Madoff clients.This litigation includes challenges to some of the largest settlements, including a $7.2 billion accord with the estate of Florida investor and former Madoff customer Jeffry Picower.Picard’s lawsuits include a $6.4 billion case against Madoff’s former bank JPMorgan Chase & Co, a $9 billion case against HSBC Holdings Plc and related defendants, and a $19.6 billion case centered on Austria’s Bank Medici AG and its founder Sonja Kohn.The trustee has also sued the owners of the New York Mets baseball team for $1 billion. Mediation is ongoing, the filing said, and is being led by former New York Governor Mario Cuomo.