Madoff t-shirts and beach gear for sale on eBay

It is not going to add up to the $50bn that, collectively, they may have lost, but the clients, staff and trading partners of self-confessed fraudster Bernard Madoff are at least trying to cash in what they do have to show for their business.

The online auction site eBay is filling up with Madoff memorabilia, the promotional trinkets, emblazoned with the Madoff Investment Securities logo, that he gave out to associates over his almost five decades on Wall Street.

Up for sale are backpacks, sweatshirts, t-shirts and a whole host of beach gear, reflecting Mr Madoff's oft-repeated personal history as a Long Island lifeguard in the Sixties who used his $5,000 earnings to start his own share trading firm. A beach chair was selling for $50 on eBay yesterday, a fleece picnic rug in a Madoff-logo canvas bag with drawstring pouch was available for $18. Someone whose family member used the services of Madoff Investment Securities is selling a beach towel that they were given with the company's logo on it.

There are also souvenirs from the annual inter-stock exchange sporting tournaments which Mr Madoff – a former chairman of Nasdaq – used to sponsor, including one in Palm Beach, the Florida resort where he has a mansion and where many of the local country club members were scammed by him. An eBay seller using the name stock910 has put a Madoff Investment Securities beach bag up for sale. "My old securities firm used Madoff for order flow," he says. "Use it in Palm Beach this winter. You'll be a hit!"

Emom1013 is selling $20 t-shirts given out at the summer picnic for employees at Mr Madoff's mansion in Long Island, New York. "The proceeds from this auction go directly to a family whose husband/father is facing being out of a job and health insurance thanks to good old Bernie," the seller says. A former Nasdaq employee is selling a Madoff umbrella that "will protect you from the rain but not a Ponzi scheme".

Mr Madoff admitted to his two sons last month that his investment business was "all just one big lie". Charities, celebrities, pension funds, hedge funds and banks around the world have been totting up their losses ever since. Instead of investing their money and generating the steady returns he claimed, Mr Madoff had instead been running what is called a Ponzi scheme, paying existing clients using money coming in from new investors.

The affair has turnedthe spotlight on regulatory failures at the Securities & Exchange Commission. Harry Mark-opolos, a Boston accountant who first told the SEC he suspected massive fraud in 1999, will testify today before the House Financial Services Committee.