By Jonathan Stempel and Emily Chasan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The judge overseeing the liquidation of Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff's investment firm has allowed victims unhappy with his ruling on how to calculate their losses to appeal directly to a federal appeals court.

Monday's ruling by Bankruptcy Judge Burton Lifland means shorter waits for victims waiting for court-appointed trustee Irving Picard to rule on their claims and allows the appeal to bypass the federal district court.

Lifland accepted arguments by both sides that case go to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.

The judge on March 1 accepted Picard's "net equity" method to calculate victims' losses, marking the differences between what the investors put into Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC and what they took out.

Many investors preferred that their claims be based on balances reflected on their last account statements prior to Madoff's December 2008 arrest, even if such sums were fictitious.

"An immediate appeal of the net equity order is appropriate because this proceeding involves a matter of public importance, and an immediate appeal may materially advance the progress of this proceeding," Lifland wrote.

According to Picard's website, http://madofftrustee.com , as of March 5 the trustee had approved 1,950 claims valued at $5.24 billion and denied 10,124 claims.

The Securities Investor Protection Corp, which helps recover assets from failed brokerages, had committed to return $654.1 million to victims, the website said. That agency can repay as much as $500,000 per claim.

"The entry of a final, non-appealable order regarding the net equity dispute will provide finality and closure" to aggrieved investors, lawyers for Picard and some of the victims wrote in a joint letter to Lifland.

Madoff pleaded guilty last year to orchestrating what investigators have called a $65 billion fraud. He is serving a 150-year sentence in a North Carolina federal prison.

The case is In re: Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 08-1789.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Emily Chasan. Editing by Robert MacMillan)