Trustee Irving Picard slapped a $200 million suit today on Bernie Madoff's brother, Peter; sons, Mark and Andrew; and niece Shana. Give back those ill-gotten gains, said Picard, going where no Madoff-related lawsuit had gone before.

Check out the official announcement at Picard's site.

Maybe this will finally shake loose some real information on the likelihood of the Madoff clan's involvement as more than clueless bystanders.

Peter Madoff definitely was more than a bystander, though whether he was clueless about Bernie's scam hasn't been determined. Why say that about Peter? Because he was a high muckety-muck (even higher than Bernie) in the securities industry's powerful lobbying group. For years. During the scam.

And as we already know, Peter Madoff invested a student's money in Bernie's scheme, was sued, and reached a settlement with the kid.

This new suit by Picard should shake loose a bunch of new facts, and then we'll probably see that, in the Madoff scandal, the apples didn't fall very far from the tree.