Completly off topic but not as bad a FIRST comment.

Is anyone else having problems replying to other comments? Like you click reply and it sends you to the top of the page with no way to reply?

Also, the judge needs to be carful here, if he know's where the money is, put him away for life and the victims will never see it. Maybe they shoudl have Jack Bauer find out for them.

burn, nuff said

What a moron.. If i pulled off a swindle like that, I would have cashed out and bought an island somewhere that i couldnt be extradited..

70 yrs of age, and a 150 year sentence?

So he scams people out of billions of dollars and he's going to jail on my dime?

Anyone else see that as just wrong?

I imagine lots of money is hidden away for his family and grandkids.

@Trencher93: What's unusual about that? You don't get sentenced based on your age, you get sentenced based on the crime you did.

Good. He's a crook who stole from other people.

However, some responsibility lies with the people who gave him money. I mean, c'mon, you were earning anywhere between 10 and 20% while the rest of the market worldwide was tanking? And you didn't ask ANY questions? You wrote your checks directly to the person instead of the company? Accept your losses as payment for your unfettered greed.

@Wormfather is Wormfather : The money is under a volcanic rock in a stone wall around a farm. or under a church pew with information on the kennedy assassination.

I don't predict he will get a full life sentence. So far the judge has let him live a lavish lifestyle while they made their case. I'm sure he has bought the right people.

I like that touch of victimhood. "I believed it would end shortly and I would be able to extricate myself and my clients from the scheme." And then, you know, things just got out of hand and he was trapped!

I hope he dies in prison.

@ penarestel (reply not working)

I understand that's frustrating, but I prefer paying for his prison time to letting him free to do it again. I could go with exile, does the US do that?

F-me in the butt jail or filet minon for dinner jail?

The hanging trees in Union Square are still there, although hanging wouldn't be good enough for him.

@Wormfather is Wormfather: Yes, its being very buggy about that the past few days.

He will most likely get some ridiculous, slap on the wrist sentence.

I wonder if they are making a back room deal that lets his wife keep millions in stolen money in exchange for a guilty plea that protects involved third parties such as the SEC from being implicated by the evidence generate from a trial.

Put him in stocks!

Old punishments were so effective... *wistful sigh*

Okay, now that Madoff is going to jail, can we focus on some real criminals please? I think there's a few execs who could use a trip to the pen.

Rather than getting 150 years in jail, I'd like to see each of his victims get ten minutes alone with him.

@penarestel: Um, what would you suggest? A public hanging?

Since this is over $50M Madoff would have to serve time in federal custody, aka "federal pound me in the ass prison". Most likely he'll be in solitary because he literally wouldn't last a day there.

Sucks, I guess.

It's really, really bad when your PLEA BARGAIN involves 150 years in prison.

@winshape: I don't think that the victims are "responsible" for his crimes, but I agree that they shouldn't get as much sympathy as some are saying. It seems that the indications were quite clear that Madoff was running a scam, so yeah, greed was the real reason most invested with him. I think most of them probably figured he was doing *something* illegal, and didn't care as long as he was able to get away with it and continue making them those high returns.

What DOES piss me off quite a bit more is that Madoff indirectly cost the government billions and billions in tax revenue. Now all those people will be able to write off their losses, which will mean that the government will lose expected tax revenue.

The trick is to sentence him to the full 150 years. Then he can buy down the number of years by liquidating his hidden assets.

I'm predicting if he makes full restitution...he'll get 15 years.

@Cocoa Vanilla: Right, who's to say Bernie might live to 200 years old? Unlikely, sure, but certainly possible, so they sentence him on the crime, not his age.

@johnva: Yes, but didn't the government collect taxes on money that never existed while the scam was running?

So we will never ever know who the guilty third parties (in the Government) are? I'll be shocked they don't just Lee Harvey Oswald/Jack Ruby him so they can stick with their lone gunman theory.

The next question will be what becomes of the assets which for the past several months (after the scheme collapsed) he had allegedly been giving to his wife and other family members so that when HIS assets were seized he could honestly say he had nothing and his family would be able to live off of the funds that were earned from the scheme. While the Bernie issue may be completed, I think that it will take years for the scheme to be completely unraveled.

This may sound macabre...but I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Bernie Madoff is dead within the month. A Ken Lay death, if you will.

This brings to mind a quote from Office Space:

"This isn't Riyadh. You know they're not gonna saw your hands off here, alright? The worst they would ever do is they would put you for a couple of months into a white-collar, minimum-security resort! Shit, we should be so lucky! Do you know, they have conjugal visits there?"

@Trencher93: Yup. Living like a king for decades with biollions of dollars floating around you and then "retiring" to a minimum security Club-Fed for the final few years of his life.

Worse things happen to 18-year-olds that get cell phone picture messages of nude 17-year-olds and people pulled over with a bong in the backseat.

I'm not sure he should not be allowed to plea to a lesser offense. He should have been brought up on trial and a full investigation into how he got away with this and who he was paying off needs to be revealed.

@Tightlines
You mean where he and his co-conspirators fake his death, have his body "cremated and buried in a secret location" and his conviction abated so that his family and friends (and his still live self) can enjoy the spoils of his crimes, Ken Lay death?

@Tightlines:I'll start with that, and then proceed to tarring and feathering the corpse.

Wow 150yrs for Madoff.. Seems like a moot point for him to get this sentence. I mean lets face it he is 70yrs old, he has had a full life, he has achieved most if not all of his goals in life. Going to prison now is only symbolic and only for his protection from not getting killed. Him going to prison would be like going to a retirement home for him. He will feel no pain or remorse for what he has done. He has a free ride until his death weather it be in prison or not.

From the article:

"A court-appointed trustee liquidating Mr. Madoff's business has so far only been able to identify about $1 billion in assets to satisfy claims..."

Nice.

@Tightlines: Only if it was reported. If this was set up as a Roth IRA, or something similar, then you would only be taxed when you pulled out the money. If you end up with zero, then no taxes.

You could argue that the money was taxed. Madoff paid all sorts of taxes on his multi-million dollar apartment and furnishings. Companies paid taxes on both the raw materials and the labor to make those products as well as their own corporate taxes. And so on.

@NigerianScammer: Says the person named "NigerianScammer".

$50,000,000,000 / (150 years in hours)

$38,026.54/hr

@Applekid: oh man, that was like my worst nightmare

He should have pulled a Marc Rich. Flee the country and start giving money to the Democrats until one gives him a pardon.

But what kind of "prison" will he go to? The country-club for white collar criminals? Sure its not the French Riviera, but I bet its still a pretty decent retirement home for him, and now he'll get his meals and healthcare all on the government's (and our) dime.

Seriously, there needs to be some way that the government will also seize any and all assets that he (or his wife and family) have that came from this scheme to cover his expenses and pay back the people he scammed.

@m4ximusprim3: No one's really burnt at the stake anymore. Perhaps after the tarring and feathering...

@Tightlines: All that money he scammed ought to be somewhere. I'm sure that if it was all paid back you'd still find some extra that could be used to pay for his burden.

Short of that I'm all go for the public hanging. Preferably one where his neck isn't broken, he just suffocates from the strangulation.

It's not so much about how much time as where he's sent. i vote for a real-life Oz.

@savdavid: "There's always money in the banana stand..."

I'd be curious what kind of life insurance policy he has and what the payout is.