Bernard Madoff Receives Maximum 150-year Prison Sentence
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Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff has received the legal maximum 150-year sentence for a fraud in which over $65 billion were stolen or lost. Madoff’s investment business was revealed to be the largest pyramid scheme ever created; his lawyer said today his business handled as much as 10% of all transactions on Wall Street at one time. 9 of Madoff’s victims testified during today’s sentencing, one of them saying she now has to sift through garbage to collect bottles in order to pay the bills.
The judge called Madoff’s fraud “evil”. Victims have testified about how they were induced to devote all of their investments and savings to the Madoff business, with never an indication that the billionaire financier was in fact running a sophisticated Ponzi scheme. US District Judge Denny Chin also ordered that all of Madoff’s assets will be used to pay victims. His wife has agreed to give up all of her properties, keeping an estimated $2 million for herself and her family. On Friday, Judge Chin ordered Madoff to forfeit $170 billion in illegally obtained assets. Most were not his personal wealth, but part of the investment business he used to defraud some 8,000 people of over $65 billion in wealth.
His facade shattered on Dec. 11, as Madoff confessed to authorities that his firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, was “one big lie.” Under immense pressure from a rush of investor redemptions, he admitted he used money from new investors to pay old ones. Regulators later said that his investment advisory business hadn’t made a trade in at least 13 years.
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Only Mr. Madoff’s accountant has been arrested, but a total of 10 other individuals are currently under federal investigation in relation to Madoff’s fraud. $13 billion in real money was lost in the scam, but Madoff’s many clients had been told, over time, that they had earned a total of $65 billion in wealth on their investments. Most of that money was never real and will never be seen by Madoff’s investors.
Thousands of investors lost their entire life savings. Major businesses and charities were also heavily affected. According to Bloomberg, “Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet, chief executive officer of Access International Advisors, which managed $3 billion, was driven to suicide because of his firm’s Madoff-related losses, his brother, Bertrand Magon de la Villehuchet, said in January.”
It is expected the investigation will be expanded and that as the paper trail leads to new co-conspirators and new testimony, a complex web of departments and strategies all designed to perpetuate and cover up the massive fraud. Some observers maintain, however, that it may in fact be possible that only a few of the top figures in the firm had full knowledge of the fraudulent nature of the business, the rest of the employees simply handling paperwork related to non-existent trades.
One of his victims, Dominic Ambrosino, called the fraud “an incredibly heinous crime” and said “In a sense, I would like somebody in the court today to tell me how long is my sentence.” Madoff said he asked for no mercy and explained that the entire fraud emerged from his inability to admit he had failed once his investment choices started losing money.
Some of the victims said they wanted to see Madoff spend his life behind bars. Others said they really don’t care about his fate, they only want their money back. Some will not be compensated at all, because the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) will not reimburse investors who withdrew money from their accounts over the years. One such couple, Rose and Jack Less, lost $800,000 to Madoff’s fraud.
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