Madoff sentenced to 150 years in prison
By Grant McCool and Martha Graybow, Reuters.com
Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison on Monday for perpetrating the biggest and most brazen investment fraud in Wall Street history.
The courtroom erupted in cheers and applause as U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin imposed the maximum possible prison sentence on the 71-year-old defendant.
Madoff stood facing the judge with his hands clasped in front of him as he learned his fate.
“The fraud here was staggering,” Chin said, after listening to angry statements from some of Madoff’s victims.
Before his sentencing, Madoff addressed the court.
“I cannot offer you an excuse for my behavior,” he said, speaking in a calm voice. “How do you excuse betraying thousands of investors who entrusted me with their life savings?”
Wearing a dark business suit, leaning forward with his hands resting on a table, he said he tried to undo his crimes but “the harder I tried, the deeper a hole I dug for myself.”
He added, “I live in a tormented state now, knowing the pain and suffering I have created.”
Earlier, Madoff sat still, his eyes lowered, as victims came before the judge to tell how they were ruined financially, many having to sell their homes and live off Social Security.
“How could somebody do this to us? How could this be real? We did nothing wrong,” said Dominic Ambrosino, a retired New York City corrections officer. “We will have to sell our home and hope to survive on Social Security alone.”
“You have left your children with a legacy of shame,” said Tom FitzMaurice, 63, calling Madoff “an evil low-life.”
“He has shown no remorse … His crime was premeditated and calculated. He was planning to scam investors days before his arrest. If he could, he would still be stealing from investors,” FitzMaurice said.
“He cheated investors out of money so that he had his wife Ruth and two sons could live a life of luxury,” he said.
Madoff confessed to running a multibillion-dollar “Ponzi scheme” in which investors were paid returns from money paid by later investors.
Investigators do not know how much was stolen, according to court papers. Prosecutors say $170 billion flowed through the principal Madoff account over decades, and that weeks before the financier’s December arrest the firm’s statements showed a total of $65 billion in accounts.
The trustee winding down the Madoff firm has so far collected $1.2 billion to return to investors.
(Reporting by Grant McCool and Martha Graybow; editing by John Wallace)
‘Monster’ Madoff Deserves ‘No Hope,’ Victims Say
By David Glovin, Bloomberg.com
Victims of Bernard Madoff’s record- setting Ponzi scheme described him as a “monster” and “serial criminal” who deserves “no hope” and “no forgiveness” in 113 letters sent to the judge who will sentence him on June 29.
Federal prosecutors today filed a court document that includes letters written to U.S. District Judge Denny Chin, who will sentence Madoff for defrauding investors of as much as $65 billion. Eight victims have asked to speak at the sentencing, where Madoff faces as many as 150 years in prison.
“Mr. Madoff has wreaked havoc on our family,” Patricia Brown, a 61-year-old widow, wrote in one letter.
“I can’t tell you how scattered we feel,” wrote another investor, Elle Bussi-Sottile. “It goes beyond financially. It reaches to the core and affects your general faith in humanity.”
Madoff, 71, pleaded guilty March 12 to defrauding investors by using money from new ones to pay off old ones. He’s been held in prison since then. Before his arrest, he told his clients they had $65 billion invested with him.
Defense attorney Ira Sorkin said in an interview that Madoff’s response, if there is one, will come in his own court submission or at sentencing. He declined to say when he would file a brief.
‘Bankrupt’
The letters include dozens of accounts from investors who were living off their Madoff accounts and believed their retirements were secure. Some of the letter writers are retirees in their 70s or 80s, and others are from investors in feeder funds that placed money with Madoff.
“According to Madoff’s last statement for November 2008, I had $2.3 million,” wrote investor Morton Chalek. “Two weeks later, I was bankrupt.”
Michael Schwartz, who lives in New Jersey, told Chin his parents lost their life savings, which was to be used for “my brother who is mentally retarded.”
Carla Hirschhorn said she’s lost faith in the U.S. government since the fraud came to light, and that she’s now being “threatened with ‘clawback’ suits” by the trustee of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. The Securities and Exchange Commission investigated Madoff and didn’t discover his fraud.
‘Life of Hell’
Korean War veteran Allan Goldstein, 76, said that he’s now destitute after selling his home in upstate New York. He said he surrendered his car, can’t afford long-term health insurance, and is living in a room in his daughter’s house.
“You are a murderer,” investor Phyllis Lerner wrote. “You committed ‘generational theft.’”
“He has condemned his investors to a life of hell, while his hell will be the prison you sentence him to,” wrote Emma De Vita, 81, an investor from Chalfont, Pennsylvania.
The case is U.S. v. Madoff, 09-cr-00213, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
Whistle-blower says a lot of Madoff money is gone
From Boston.com
Bernard Madoff probably had large sums of money in offshore accounts that will never be recovered, whistle-blower Harry Markopolos said at a financial conference at Boston College tonight.
Markopolos, the now-famous financial investigator who tried unsuccessfully for 10 years to alert the Securities and Exchange Commission to Madoff’s fraud, said his study tracked Madoff’s investors around the world, particularly those in ‘‘feeder funds’’ in Europe.
Beyond the well-known funds like Fairfield Greenwich, Markopolos alleged, there are probably other large investors staying below the radar so they won’t be forced to repay the gains they reaped from investing with Madoff.
The trustee in the Madoff bankruptcy case is charged with recouping as much money as possible for the convicted Ponzi artist’s victims. As part of that effort, Markopolos said, it is fair for the trustee to go after large longtime investors, who were almost certainly paid profits from the funds of other investors.
‘‘The investors who took distributions for sometimes decades took a heck of a lot more out of this than they put in,’’ he said.
Fairfield Greenwich, Markopolos said, hired three auditors in three years in what he called ‘‘a clear case of auditor shopping.’’ Fairfield Greenwich has denied any wrongdoing.
Markopolos, who cut a stern figure when he testified before Congress earlier this year, appears to have become accustomed to his new role as a celebrity speaker. He walked easily through the audience in a chartreuse suit as he spoke, making jokes about regulators, lawyers, and his own paranoia during his long investigation of Madoff.
Markopolos said he is working on a book, a documentary, and a film. ‘‘I like chasing bad guys,’’ he said. ‘‘What doesn’t kill you makes you better.’’
(By Beth Healy, Globe staff)