NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York student won a court order on Wednesday to temporarily freeze the assets of Peter Madoff, brother of jailed swindler Bernard Madoff, in a lawsuit over lost inheritance money.

A mug shot of Bernard Madoff released to Reuters on March 17, 2009. REUTERS/United States Marshall Service/FOIA/Handout

Andrew Ross Samuels, 22, of Brooklyn Law School, said in papers filed in a suburban New York court that he lost nearly $500,000 in inheritance money that was entrusted to Peter Madoff, who invested it in Bernard Madoff’s scheme.

Madoff pleaded guilty on March 12 to running the biggest investment fraud in Wall Street’s history, which prosecutors have said involved as much as $65 billion.

Madoff was sent to jail pending sentencing in June. His brother, who was an executive of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, has not been charged with any wrongdoing by prosecutors or regulators.

The lawsuit charged that Peter Madoff “as chief compliance officer and senior managing director of BMIS had full knowledge that it was a fraudulent Ponzi scheme and nothing more than an unprecedented fraud.”

Bernard Madoff confessed in court that he ran a classic Ponzi scheme, in which early investors were paid with money from new clients.

“Samuels’ grandfather passed away making Peter Madoff the trustee of a trust for him that’s worth about $500,000, and the money ain’t there,” said the lawyer, Steven Schlesinger. “When you are the trustee and the money’s not there, it’s per se liability.”

He said the temporary freeze applied to “everything he owns”, but he did not know the total value of the assets of Peter Madoff, who was trustee of Samuels’ money since 2003.

The lawsuit seeks damages no less than the $478,009.95 said to have been in the trust.

A hearing was scheduled for April 3 in Nassau County State Supreme Court on New York’s Long Island before Justice Stephen Bucaria, who signed the order on Wednesday.

According to court papers, the order said Madoff “is prohibited and restrained from removing any funds ... from any bank, brokerage firm, or other institution wherever situated and without limitation.”

A lawyer for Peter Madoff could not be reached for comment.

The case is Andrew Ross Samuels v Peter B. Madoff 09-5534 the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Nassau