Federal prosecutors this afternoon unsealed their formal charges against Bernie Madoff, and he's expected to plead guilty Thursday to all 11 counts.

There's no plea bargain, the Wall Street Journal reports, and U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin swears that the investigation will continue.

But here are some questions:

• Why only 11 counts?

• How in the world could the prosecutors already be charging the guy in such a seemingly complex case?

• Where's the motherfucking money?

Last things first: Amir Efrati's WSJ story notes up high:

So who exactly got burned? All these people and foundations are saying they got burned, and no doubt many of them probably did, but where is the fucking money? Did most of the loot from new suckers really go to pay off the Ponzi scheme's previous suckers?

Yes, what exactly are the details? Which investors got money from the schemes? We know that in Ponzis, earlier investors often make out just fine; it's the later ones who lose out when the music finally stops.

So who really got suckered and lost money? And who got suckered but didn't lose money?

Are we ever going to know the details of how this money moved? That's doubtful, because there will be no trial (no criminal one, at least). That's nice for Madoff's victims, because many of them probably don't want the world to know exactly how they got ripped off; they just want their money back.

But it's not so nice for the general public, because we have a right to know exactly how all these charitable foundations and public pension funds and the like got snookered.

No trial. No details. Too bad.

The government's demanding that Madoff forfeit $177 billion in proceeds and property, as the Times reports. But Madoff's lawyers are already mounting defenses against that, and the government will have to get a hell of a lot more specific before it has a chance of getting anywhere near that amount back.

On down in the WSJ story, Efrati notes:

Yeah, but how much exactly did Madoff and his family stash? When and how did he buy his mansion, his apartment, his Hamptons estate, his Palm Beach club memberships? And with what? Fees he extracted from the suckers for whom he made non-existent trades? Or money he made from his other, presumably legit, activities on the Street?

Are the Ponzi scheme fees going to be "clawed back"? Are his more legit profits going to be clawed back?

Right now, we don't know the answers to those and many other questions. Efrati writes that there was little new in the prosecutors' release of the formal "criminal information" papers against Madoff. However Efrati's story goes on to talk about big discrepancies concerning the money amounts that have been thrown around since the scandal broke in mid-December:

And here's a troubling sentence from the U.S. Attorney's press release:

How much? To whom? Where is it?

A final disquieting note. Efrati quotes Brad Friedman, an attorney representing Madoff investors, as saying that, as Efrati paraphrases it, "today's developments will be met with mixed emotions." Friedman is then directly quoted:

So if there's no plea agreement with Madoff, what was the rush in charging him and why only 11 counts? Particularly if he's supposedly not cooperating.

Has our new Department of Justice already gotten rid of all of its instruments of torture? Isn't there still a spare waterboard around the place somewhere? Was it really necessary to let him keep living in his luxury apartment since his arrest?

Seriously, though, it's hard to understand why the rush to charge the guy until every last detail and every last simoleon are extracted from him and his family.

Madoff seems to still be treated with kid gloves — the kind the schnook can probably still afford to buy with the proceeds from his fraudulent schemes.