Judge To Madoff: Hope You Like The Look Of Cinder Blocks, Douchebag
No more $7 million penthouse. Today was Madoff's first full day at the Metropolitan Correction Center, where he'll be spending some quality time while awaiting sentencing. ABCNews has some insights about the facility and its amenities.
He'll have to trade the sharp, charcoal-gray suit he wore to court Thursday for a baggy brown uniform. He'll get to go outside only once every other day, and outside will be a cage on the roof.
"Some of the guards are gonna go out of their way to make sure he knows he's nobody," said Joe Reddick, who served 16 years in federal prisons up and down the East Coast. "That $50 billion or whatever money he had, is nothing."
"In commissary, you're only allowed to spend $253 a month," Reddick said. "So everybody has the same spending limit.
"He may find a guard who might bring him an extra piece of chicken."
...
The schedule is strict: Lights on at 6 a.m., breakfast at 6:30 a.m., lunch at 11 a.m., dinner at 5 p.m., lights out at 11 p.m. During the day, Madoff can watch television, play ping-pong or volunteer for janitorial duty.
Sounds fun! If you'd like to read Madoff's full apology to the court, click here. (PDF)
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Comments:
Can I get a short sentence? Outside of the 'volunteering for janitorial duty', that sounds like the most relaxation I have had in AGES! Going from a like of leisure to.. a life of leisure in crappier surroundings. They should make him serve his sentence in a sweatshop somewhere.
What time of day do the brutal gang rapes take place for this piece of crap?
He's only in jail until final sentencing. Then he will get to go to prison.
I can't wait for the Dominique Dunn episode...
An inmate named Bubba will help Madoff get in touch with his feminine side.
Wouldn't be surprised if someone put a hit out on him eventually. He pissed off alot of people. That list they published had thousands of names.
all of his, his wives, and his childrens' assets need to be seized and redistributed to the his victims. I know it's a very small amount compared to what they lost, but it needs to be done to prove a point.
@segfault:
Wow, reading comprehension ftw. I am putting my posting on hold until I have finished a cup of coffee. I have turned into the people who annoy me by not reading what was actually written before posting. *shame*
I do still stand by the request for a short 'vacation' and my wish to see him in a sweatshop though.
@jaydez: Let's be careful here, don't forget it was his kids who turned him in, and they run successful companies that are not related to him. How would you like it if your bank account was seized because of something your father did?
I agree about his wife though, she lived high off the ill-gotten gains for years.
Guy stole more money than anyone in history and everyone is only mentioning his 7 million dollar pad..... Is anyone curious where the 70 Billion is?
@Razorgirl: Regardless, although he definitely deserves to be put in a sweatshop somewhere until he's made enough money to pay back his victims, with interest, the fact is that the penitentiary system is designed not around punishment but around protection - to keep dangerous people away from the rest of us.
What's funny is...if this had been anyone else, he would have probably gotten a light sentence and a slap on the wrist. Like, say if he had stolen 5,000 from 200 poor people in a ponzi scheme. But since he pissed off our political and financial elite, they will make sure he gets the stiffest sentence possible.
Does anyone actually believe his sons didn't know what was going on? People outside of the company figured it out and they were practically running the place at the end.
It's really sweet that he took the fall for everyone and plead guilty. Even giving his sons credit for his downfall. But he should have lots of company in jail.
this should affect his whole family.. i mean.. they should get stripped of everything. he ruined so many lives.
@LegoMan322: Although not technically a definition of Ponzi schemes, most people who run Ponzi schemes generally do so because the money is *gone* (i.e. they've spent it) and they need to use incoming new investments to pay off redemptions from existing investors. So asking where a Ponzi scheme's money went is pretty pointless. If it existed, it wouldn't be a Ponzi scheme, it would be simple embezzlement, and it'd just be a matter of finding & seizing the assets and returning them to the victims. I think that the current executor of his company recently said that there's about 10% of the total original assets available.
@Razorgirl: The best vacation I've ever been on was an archaeological dig. They told me where to go, what to do, when to stop, when to eat, WHAT to eat, sent me home (to the local housing), and I was exhausted enough to sleep like a log and eat everything put in front of me.
I came home SO. RELAXED. Not making decisions for two weeks, even though it involved back-breaking manual labor, was way more relaxing than I could possibly have imagined!
@humphrmi:
Yeah his kids turned him in but I think that was just a ploy. And even if his wife, kids, brother, etc. didn't know (which I don't buy) they have received what amounts to stolen property (unless there is some other source from the 60 million sitting in Ruth's accounts or some other source for the house in France, Palm Beach, the Hamptons) and you don't get to keep stolen property.
Saboth: Not necessarily. A South Carolina man was just sentenced to 60 years for stealing a few thousand dollars worth of copper wiring from homes. The total damages were around $200,000. Considering age and the amount Madoff profited, I'd say the 60 years is a much harsher penalty.
And relatively speaking $70b vs $200,000 is like comparing the theft of 7 luxury cars and a bag of peanut m&ms.
@ segfault I get where you're coming from, but I have worked in a jail. It's not as "stress-free" as you may think it is. For one, you have a strict schedule. And secondly, there are always fights and inmates trying to show dominance. That and it tends to be very smelly, dank, and boring.
Jail isn't easy-going. I only worked 8 hrs a day, 5 days a week and it took its toll on me.
Also, the jokes of rape aren't funny.
@Russ Savage Oh, I see. So if your father made a mistake, you should be punished?!
If thereis no evidence of any wrongdoing on their parents, then they shouldn't be punished. Period.
Yes, they aren't funny....
They are HILARIOUS!!!!
@humphrmi:
I don't buy that story, and I'm amazed anyone does. Investigations have shown that no trades had been placed for basically the entire existence of the company... not ONE.
I used to work on a trading desk and I'll tell you that if a day went by that I didn't get an order, let alone a month, I'd be wondering why I was being paid. Clients were receiving statements with falsified transactions that the trading desk knew they did not process, there is no way 'ol Bernie was sitting in his office until all hours of the night manually altering statements before they went out to clients. This was a scheme on a large scale and took some serious organization to pull off.
I think its all part of the plan that his sons would turn him in and then look innocent. If you had intimate access to the mastermind of a giant ponzi scheme and didn't realize that something was up, I'd doubt your abilities to run a company or for that matter, use a potato peeler.
Madoff belongs in prison for the rest of his life, just like the politicians who have raped the taxpayers of this country for trillions.....
"their parents" should be "their parts" O_o
No, fatcop, they aren't hilarious. Disgusting.
@sleze69: I believe those are "as needed". Hopefully, his new prison buddies will think he needs many.
Please hold on the rape jokes/comparisons. The jokes aren't funny, the comparisons aren't apt and they both make you look stupid.
At least Madoff knew he'd been caught and saved the court a ton of work on a trial.
At least there's some justice now. I don't think the people that were had by Kenneth Lay got much justice considering the guy got to go on vacation AFTER he'd been convicted and he conveniently dies.
So did his first night in jail make him cry like Paris Hilton? Mommmeeeee!
Does this mean he will hire Martha Stewart as a decorator?
Yeah, I'm not convinced that he will be pampered and kow-towed to while in this so-called 'prison.' I'm sure that if his friends and family still have the money they got from this scheme, there will be ways to "encourage" the guards to keep ole Bernie comfortable.
Like in most of the other jails (Arpaio's), the TV choices likely are things like The Weather Channel and Food Network.
It makes me sick at the mob mentality surrounding this guy.
Sure, he's the scum of the earth. But to hope people rape him?
I mean, he's still a person. I say, instead of jail we need work-factories, with safe conditions, where we can put people who commit non-violent crimes and use them to add productivity to America.
Don't just stick them in a cell where they're useless.
Exactly. Why isn't the money of Madoff's wife given to the victims? She was the bookkeeper, she had to know it was wrong.
Just finished reading his "apology". He spends one sentence talking about the victims and two pages trying to convince people that he singe-handedly ran the entire operation without a single other person's knowledge and while keeping the books and money completely separate from the "legitimate" business.
I'd like to see them try to throw the book at the other people in his "business" as well, but if they can't they at least need to freeze the entire business (including the supposedly legitimate parts) and liquiidate it for the victims.
"During the day, Madoff can watch television, play ping-pong or volunteer for janitorial duty..."
... or dig up a doctor and pay him 20 menthol Kools for a surgical shine job on his eyes.
@gamabunta: To your point, Mossad's Special Operations Division, also known as Metsada, takes care of highly sensitive....assignments.
@nakedscience: I agree, I don't know why people think prison rape is funny. It is a horrible violent nightmare that shouldn't be wished on anyone, let alone joked about.
@Jage: Please see [www.unicor.gov] We already have what you suggest. While I have my concerns about slave labor, the biggest opponents to it are private business concerns who don't want to have to compete with things manufactured by prisoners at prison wages, which last time I checked were in the 30 cents/hr range.
no good deed goes un-punished.
now i hope he likes to play
"don't drop the soap in a prison shower room"
or else he'll be "it".
How long before he gets transferred to some country-club minimum security prison for white collar criminals?
He'll never see a "club fed" facility.
Under federal law a sentence of 25 years or longer mandates that it be served in a maximum security facility.
@Jage: He has ruined peoples lives, stolen every penny they had and you just want him to work in a safe environment and do what? Do you really think that he could ever return all the money he stole?
The next best thing is pain and lots of it for someone like him. I think after you've destroyed someones life saving; full well knowing what you've done, you forfeit the title as "human" and should be treated as anything but. Also gauging from his age, I can't see him doing anything labor like and no one will ever let him near anything remotely brain-power like again.
So please keep on with the rape jokes. As someone thats been stolen from, the next best thing to being reimbursed is dishing out pain.
@bxbrett: Guess that makes sense. A long sentence pretty much automatically makes someone an escape risk.
Another scapegoat. Madoff stole money from a lot of millionaires who made their money disreputably. And somehow he gets linked to the financial crisis caused by the major banks and the government?
And if you admit the truth, the stock market is mostly a Ponzi scheme with early investors being paid off by later ones.
It's great that he is in jail, but his family is still living off his ill gotten gains.
Some of the victims lost their savings but Madoff's wife is sitting on millions in her bank accounts and the SEC still can't figure out where the money went.