A federal appeals court agrees with the method a trustee used to calculate how much each investor lost in the multibillion-dollar fraud carried out by Bernard Madoff.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a written decision Tuesday that investors are only entitled to recover the amount they originally invested with Madoff.

Lawyers for investors had argued that they should be entitled to recover profits as well.

Madoff had told thousands of investors just before his December 2008 arrest that their investments had more than tripled. Madoff claimed the original investment of about $20 billion had grown to more than $60 billion. Prosecutors say it was actually a Ponzi scheme.

Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence after admitting the massive multi-decade fraud.