Madoff says his Ponzi scheme was known by others (Photo: U.S. Marshals/REUTERS)

Nearly two years ago, just months after the Madoff scam was revealed, TIME.com wrote a story questioning whether JP Morgan Chase was hiding evidence that it knew of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.  Now it appears, Bernie Madoff is making the same accusations.

In his first interview since being jailed, Madoff told the New York Times that the bankers and large investors who were either his clients or of which he was a customer “had to know” about his $20 billion Ponzi scheme. He doesn’t name individual banks. But in the past few months, the heat has been turning up on JP Morgan and what it did or did not know about the Madoff scam. Irving Picard, the trustee for the Madoff estate who is trying to recover investors’ lost money and doing a good job of it, has sued a number of different parties involved in the Madoff case from large investors to the funds that helped Madoff solicit investors. But one of the biggest cases, seeking $6.4 billion, that Picard has filed is against JP Morgan Chase. Picard in his complaint says numerous JP Morgan executives raised concerns about Madoff, and yet did nothing to alert authorities about the possibility of a fraud or shut it down. JP Morgan denies the allegations, and is fighting the case.

So does Bernie Madoff saying others knew make Picard’s case against JP Morgan or Mets owner Fred Wilpon, who Picard is also suing, a slam dunk? Not quite. Here’s why: