NEW YORK (AP) — One week ago, Ronnie Ambrosino was a millionaire. Now, Ambrosino is among the long list of investors whose fortunes were allegedly wiped out by Bernard Madoff. Like them, she's left hoping for a bailout that might never come.

She plans to sue Madoff but that could take years to work through the courts and yield little in the end. Her best hope to recoup some of her money is from the Securities Investor Protection Corp., an industry-funded organisation set up by the government to protect investors from fraud.

But, here's the problem: SIPC does not have enough money to pay out all the claims that are sure to come from one of the biggest fraud cases to ever hit Wall Street. Securities attorneys say the organisation has a reputation of being tough to squeeze money from, and each investor is only entitled to a maximum payout of $500,000 if a claims is approved.

SIPC officials say the books of Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities LLC are in complete disarray and could take six months or more to piece them together. With bills piling up and her bank account vanishing, the one thing Ambrosino and others caught in the alleged $50 billion fraud don't have is time.

"It feels like I'm drowning, and someone is saying 'we're going to save you, but we have to build the boat first,"' said Ambrosino, 55, who had $1.6 million invested with Madoff. "We can't wait for SIPC to go through all the papers."

The government created SIPC in 1970 to reimburse investors duped by brokerages in areas such as unauthorised trading or theft. SIPC is set up to cover losses of up to $500,000, and $100,000 of that amount can be claims for cash holdings that were lost. The scope of what SIPC covers, however, can be limited. SIPC, for example, typically won't cover claims for cases involving stock manipulation or investments made into hedge funds.

Since its inception, SIPC has paid out $508 million to reimburse some 625,000 investors who lost money. The Madoff case will be SIPC's biggest test, and experts are raising questions about whether the organisation can handle the massive amount of claims that are expected. Some experts suggest the government might have to assist.

"There's no doubt that hearings will be held on this, and some government aid is a very logical request," said Robert Schachter, an attorney with New York-based Zwerling, Schachter & Zwerling, which is representing several Madoff victims. "If we're bailing out Wall Street and the auto industry, maybe these individuals should be bailed out too."

Madoff was arrested last week and charged with securities fraud. On Wednesday he made his first public appearance at the federal courthouse in Manhattan, where a judge imposed a curfew and a monitoring bracelet. When the government established SIPC a generation ago, nation's brokerages were ordered to fund it by kicking in a percentage of their revenue. Once the amount hit $1 billion in 1996, those brokerages were allowed to reduce their contribution to $150 a year. Any changes now much be approved by Congress, SIPC said.

SIPC currently has $1.6 billion onhand to make payouts — a small amount compared with the more than $17 billion that Madoff managed at the start of the year. However, SIPC said it can tap a $1 billion line of credit and a $1 billion injection from the Treasury Department to gain access to more money.

This theoretically means that about 7,000 customers who entrusted their money to Madoff can receive the maximum amount. It is still not known how many customers Madoff's investment arm had, and investigators have not speculated.

While brokerages often highlight the fact that they are covered by SIPC, securities attorneys say the process of recouping money can be daunting and time consuming.