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Photograph of the media outside the Federal courthouse by Seth Wenig/AP
In a courtroom packed with several hundred spectators—some of them his ruined victims—Ponzi-schemer Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Denny Chin. In the courtroom, Madoff told Chin, federal prosecutors and his victims that he thought he could "work his way out" of fraud and that he lives in a "tormented state." He added that he lied to his brother and sons and that his wife Ruth Madoff cries herself to sleep each night. He did turn to face his victims briefly and said:
"I'm sorry; I know that doesn't help you. I cannot offer you an excuse for my behavior. "How do you excuse betraying thousands of investors who entrusted me with their life savings? How do you excuse deceiving 200 employees who spent most of their working life with me? How do you excuse lying to a brother and two sons who spent their entire lives helping to build a successful business? How do you excuse lying to a wife who stood by you for 50 years?"Good questions!
However, Chin cited the "staggering fraud" and countered Madoff's defense claims that the loss was not $65 billion but just $13 billion—the $13 billion number didn't include feeder funds. Chin, who said that Madoff hasn't told all he knows and added that no one submitted letters to vouch for Madoff, said he would impose a "just" sentence: "The symbolism of the sentence is very important" and that "A message will be sent" with this sentence. The judge was also concerned with how Madoff lied to regulators. Victims clapped after Chin laid down the sentence.
Madoff also heard from some of the victims, including Donald Ambrosino, a retired NYC corrections officer who lost his life savings thanks to Madoff: "How could someone do this to us? We worked honestly and so hard. This can't be real. We did nothing wrong" According to the Times, another victim, Maureen Ebel, told the court, "I have lost all of my life’s hard-earned savings. I have lost the home my husband and I had owned for 25 years because of this theft. I have lost the ability to care for myself in this old age." You can read letters from his victims in this 141-page PDF.
Madoff's attorney had pushed for a sentence of 12 years, which would be one year less than the 71-year-old's life expectancy, but the Wall Street Journal says that would actually only add up to about 9 years in federal prison because of a combination of time served, good behavior, and possible home confinement. Prosecutors demanded a 150-year sentence that would guarantee that he dies behind bars.
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His victims playing the "innocence" card
Judge Denny Chin is a stud.
Maybe he can get a few years off for good time :)
"Put another way, for once the tornado wiped out the houses on the hill and missed the trailer park in the valley."
Maybe now we can move on from this symbolic and ultimately meaningless story and start dealing with the real greed that has affected the rest of us. Steal from the rich, get a big symbolic sentence, bilk the rest of us trying to get by day by day, and you still have a job and big bonuses.
This is why you never steal from the rich ruling class. If he had stolen it all from blue collar pensions, he might have had a chance of getting a wrist slap.
justice served on a paper plate
So this criminal will be doing hard time? Or loafing around a tax-payer funded country club prison in his senior years?
oh hell no. this man's gonna go to adx florence in colorado, where the worst of the worse go. that's where the cfo of enron is, terry nichols, ramzi yousef, the unibomber. it will be no country club for old bernie...
I feel sorry for the victims but I am upset that they keep demanding the govt gives them their money back. I think they feel entitled to recoup their losses. They want the SPIC to make payment of 500K to each one of them. I hope they go after all the managers who made fees off this scheme.
i AGREE WITH YOU~!!!!!
:O
I agree with you too! The feds need to go after people like that feeder fund scum Walter Noel and the like. The vistims did make a gamble, that's what investing really is- you win some you loose some. This was a big fat loose! I do think they should recover a fraction of what they invested starting with the victims of the feeder funds (blue collar types with their 401ks and such) and go from there. I find it hard to feel sorry for the people who were relentless social climbers and invested millions in something that they obviously should have done the due diligence on.
SIPC. "SPIC" is an entirely different entity.
Unfortunately Madoff has not named names of people who helped him.
They already have his finances in a vice. Perhaps it's time for the fingers?
"You can have the money and the hammer, or you can walk out of here. You can't have both."
Investors on all levels are responsible for managing their assets and understanding the risks associated with investing in general.
This guy took advantage of ignorant people, the same way infomercials sell cheap shit to rednecks.
Hey, show some respect to the guy... he just passed away!
:-)
Those ads are still running! I saw one for "Magic Putty" last night. Billy Mays could have schooled Madoff on how you do respectable business.
so nobody tried to whack him when he entered the courthouse? surprising.
It wasn't a cash business.
No way! It's so much more fun to think about a douche like Bernie living out his final days in the Pen!
I've said it before, but now with the sentence making it a reality, I imagine Bernie looking like the jailed porno guy in Boogie Nights being abused by his bunkmate for all his remaining years.
So now we can be sure that Uncle Bernie will be Big Joey's bottom.
What if he works real hard in prison and makes enough money to pay back the money he owes, will they let him off early?
And if Ruth works the streets maybe she can chip in a couple of bucks also.
Bernie would have to make a lot of license plates...
Ruth did work the streets and all she got was Bernie...and some PATH fare.
I lost everything that I didn't really have...
Guess Madoff really took it on the Chin.
Thanks, I'll be here all week, remember to tip your server.
Shecky Greene over here...
he still didn't talk,
he followed the rules of the Street,
snitches gets stitches,
no snitching a rule even a rich white guy can abide to.
that means to me, he made a lot of people rich and a lot of people less rich. but they're still rich.
lots of people got rich and not just him, the feeder funds, the crazy commissions, the brokerage houses.
see manhattan investment fund and michael berger.
He would have been snitching on his own family, his sons, wife, cousins, etc. and for what? He could have shown them Jimmy Hoffa and there's still no way he was ever getting out of jail.
I agree. He had nothing to earn by "snitching" on his accomplices. Especially since most of them were probably very close friends or family members. Maybe the only honorable thing about Bernie is that he insisted the entire time that he was the only reason all this shit happened, and nobody he loved knew what he was up to. A lie, to be sure, but finally a lie that looks out for somebody else instead of himself.
In Nelson Muntz's voice, "HA! HA!"
Who wants to guess what his prison tats will look like?
His last 10K?
Maybe this?
A hello Kitty tramp stamp?
http://offbeatink.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/lower-back-tattoo-on-woman.jpg
Oh Bernie, I want to be sympathetic...but you're just such a dick.
CNN says Madoff did apologize to his victims. Who do we trust: CNN or Gothamist? I'll go with CNN. I'm afraid.
Sorry—I was basing the "Madoff did not turn to address his victims" on a Bloomberg News reporter's account; the reporter said Madoff did not turn his head.
But he did express his remorse, which is a sort of apology.
the media outlet is besides the point. souless greaseballs like madoff are only sorry that they got busted. if he was capable of true remorse he never could have even thought about ruining so many people's lives. he can take his apology and boof it.
"How do you excuse lying to a wife who stood by you for 50 years?"
nice try, mcfly. there's no way your wife didn't know.
Did you ever see the movie "Married to the Mob"? She didn't know nuthin.
"I thoughts he went to work at a very successful bagel shop everyday." said the teary eyed Ruth Madoff.
I'm not convinced 150 years, while the legal limit, is enough.
he wont make it a month in jail...
Yeah. 150 is enough for a man of his age to simply give up and die. He's been handed a death sentence, and his family will likely have to change their names and move ( once the press dies down ).
This provides no comfort to those who will be left to clean up the financial ruin. But, people are petty and vindictive to the point of sentencing someone to twice the average lifespan of a human being. It's in that, that I find absolute distaste for all sides of this.
In what fucked up world is it okay to sentence someone to twice their life? It's absurd, and serves only to satisfy a vindictive motive. It doesn't belong in the justice system. Justice isn't about vengeance. And even for a worthless two timing arch criminal like madoff we shouldn't be lowered to this sort of thing. Because it's exactly this sort of precedent that has set the stage for absurd drug "enforcement" sentences. And even more ridiculous counter-terrorism witch hunts.
There are bad people on this planet, to be sure. And, we should do everything in our power to stop them from hurting others. But, we can't give up on the redeeming qualities of the justice system. And we can't provide an avenue for oppression in legislature.
That is why I am saddened by the sentence. Madoff should spend the rest of his life in prison, but there's no need to set fantastic sentences with no credible basis in reality. It's merely a message to the world that our legal system is completely broken, and that we are more animals than people.
While I wholeheartedly agree, try to reason with his victims. If it were possible to sentence him to eternity in jail, I'm sure they'd push for it.
"It's merely a message to the world that our legal system is completely broken, and that we are more animals than people."
No, that would be "cruel and unusual punishment," i.e., the death penalty.
"It's absurd, and serves only to satisfy a vindictive motive."
Or maybe to, I don't know, discourage others from trying the same sh!t?!
I agree that revenge doesn't fix the situation, but I think the punishment is enough. The guy still refuses to cooperate with investigators and shows very little remorse for the lives he's ruined. And wifey still gets a cool 2 mil. That's what I call absurd.
What would really be justice is to seize all his assets & distribute them among his victims, maybe even provide a little relief for all the newly unemployed, but that ain't gonna happen.