Bamboozling Bernie Gets Hard Time

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By Tomoeh Murakami Tse

Bernard Madoff was sentenced Monday morning to 150 years in prison for conducting Wall Street’s biggest Ponzi scheme, whose victims numbered in the thousands and spanned the globe.

The term is the maximum allowed under federal guidelines and is in essence a life sentence for the 71-year-old Madoff. When U.S. District Judge Denny Chin announced his decision inside a packed federal courtroom in lower Manhattan, some of the victims let out a loud cheer.

“Mr. Madoff is sentenced to life as his victims are sentenced to life,” Maureen Ebel, a Madoff victim and 61-year-old widow from Pennsylvania, said after the 90-minute hearing.

Madoff’s attorney, Ira Lee Sorkin, had asked the judge for a 12-year sentence, saying that “vengeance is not the goal of punishment.” He argued for leniency, saying that his client was cooperating with authorities and that he had willingly given himself up when he informed his sons of a $50 billion scheme last December.

But Chin, who described Madoff’s crimes as “evil,” “staggering” and “massive” over a 20-year period, said a message had to be sent that he was being punished accordingly. The magnitude of the fraud, Chin said, was “off the charts” — federal sentencing guidelines are for losses up to $400 million dollars. Chin also noted that Madoff’s confession had come only after he knew his scheme was within days of collapse.

“I simply do not get the sense that Mr. Madoff has done all that he could or told all that he knows,” Chin said.

Madoff, dressed in a dark gray suit, white shirt and black tie, did not look out into the audience of about 200 victims and other observers, when he was led to a wooden table for the hearing. He sat still, looking down at his hands, as nine victims spoke of their shattered lives, at times through tears and shaking with anger. Among them was a 33-year-old man with a disabled brother, a retired correctional officer scrounging for work, an elderly couple who could no longer afford a trip to see their newborn grandson and a 65-year-old woman who described dumpster-diving when her food stamps run out at the end of the month.

In a prepared statement that showed slightly more emotion than his guilty allocution in March, Madoff apologized for his actions, turning around to briefly face his victims in the audience.

“I can’t ask for any forgiveness,” he said. “Although I may not have intended harm, I did a great deal of harm.”

Madoff also said that while he and his wife have been accused of being silent and unsympathetic, “my wife cries herself to sleep every night.” His wife, Madoff said, had been advised by attorneys not to speak in public until after his sentencing.

“I am embarrassed and ashamed,” Ruth Madoff said in a statement released after the hearing. “Like everyone else, I feel betrayed and confused. The man who committed this horrible fraud is not the man whom I have known for all these years.”

She added: “In the end, to say that I feel devastated for the many whom my husband has destroyed is truly inadequate. Nothing I can say seems sufficient regarding the daily suffering that all those innocent people are enduring because of my husband. But if it matters to them at all, please know that not a day goes by when I don’t ache over the stories that I have heard and read.”

This story is filed under: Politics

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