Madoff Life Prison Term Means Inmate Blame for Crash

Madoff Life Prison Term Means Inmate Blame for Crash - 3/12/2009

Home

Index of Filings

News and Press Releases

Filings

Decisions

Settlements

Litigation Activity Indices

Top Ten List

Annual/Quarterly Updates

Clearinghouse Research

Articles & Papers

Search

Related Sites

About Us

Local Rules

Sponsors

Register

_______________
Copyright © 2001
Stanford Law School

2009 News and Press Releases

SEARCH

News	News 2009
HEADLINES \| SETTLEMENTS AND DISMISSALS \| COURT FILINGS LINKS TO OTHER NEWS \| NEWS ARCHIVE	HEADLINES ARCHIVED SETTLEMENTS AND DISMISSALS ARCHIVED

HEADLINE NEWS:

Madoff Life Prison Term Means Inmate Blame for Crash
Pat Wechsler and David Glovin

Bloomberg. March 12, 2009
_________________________________________________________________________

EXCERPT: Bernard Madoff, who pleaded guilty today to masterminding the largest Ponzi scheme in history, was sent by a federal judge to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a “horrendous” jail in lower Manhattan that houses swindlers and murderers. Behind bars, he may have to fight off prison inmates who want to squeeze him for money or blame him for the Wall Street crash. “Madoff isn’t going to be real popular,” said Larry Levine, who served 10 years in federal prisons for securities fraud and narcotics trafficking and now advises convicts on surviving time behind bars. “All the guys there will have wives or parents who are losing their homes or their jobs or who can’t send money to them anymore. Everybody’s going to be blaming Bernie.” The 70-year-old investment adviser was ordered to the 12- story jail by U.S. District Judge Denny Chin until sentencing, scheduled for June 16. He faces as much as 150 years in prison. Madoff ran a $65 billion fraud that fleeced thousands of investors, including Palm Beach retirees, trustees of Yeshiva University and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who lost his savings and his foundation’s assets. The financier was undone by the Wall Street collapse as last year’s 38 percent decline in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index forced his customers to withdraw money, said Roy Smith, a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. partner. Monument t ‘Foolishness’ “No one has ever made a Ponzi scheme pay off for so long,” Smith said of the scam that prosecutors said dated back two decades. “‘Madoff’ may become a verb. It certainly is already an adjective. We can replace the old Ponzi scheme with a new Madoff version. It is a monument to the foolishness of people putting money in these places.”

Back to News page | Back to Archived News 2009 page | Back to Top

�