His death Wednesday at the Federal Medical Center in Butner Prison, North Carolina, was confirmed by the U.S. Prisons Office. No cause of death was reported.
Judge Denny Chin, who had originally been sentenced to 150 years, denied his request for release and considered his crime to be “one of the most egregious financial crimes of our time” and that he continued to charge. an amazing human toll ”.
“When I convicted Mr Madoff in 2009, it was entirely my intention for him to live the rest of his life in prison,” the mind wrote in his order last June. “The symbolism of a 150-year sentence was important: public confidence had been eroded by Mr. Madoff’s ability to manipulate the system for so many years, that he deserved to be punished according to his moral guilt.”
One of the few kind words about Madoff’s Wednesday came from Brandon Sample, one of his lawyers.
“Bernie, until his death, lived with guilt and remorse for his crimes,” Sample said. “Even though the crimes for which Bernie was convicted have come to define who he was: he was also father and husband. He was soft-spoken and intellectual. Bernie was not perfect at all. But no man is.”
He had a legendary career on Wall Street, with famous astronomical returns for his investors, which included director Steven Spielberg, actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick and New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon.
He served as president of the Nasdaq for several years in the 1990s and assembled beach houses, boats, and a Manhattan penthouse. But Madoff was arrested in 2008 and convicted of eleven crimes in 2009. He had used money from new investors to pay off previous investors. He allegedly had a total of $ 65 billion managed, but two-thirds of that money was the brainchild of Bernie Madoff. The rest was the principle of its investors.
Madoff founded Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities in 1960, but no one has been able to prove when Madoff began stealing from investors.
He told CNNMoney in a 2013 interview that it all started in 1987, but later said the scheme began in 1992. Former Madoff account manager Frank DiPascali, Jr. testified in court. that financial defaults were happening “for a long time as I remember.” He started working at the firm in 1975.
Irving Picard, the court-appointed administrator in charge of recovering property stolen by Madoff, along with the Justice Department, had recovered $ 14.4 billion as of March this year, distributing the vast majority to Madoff’s victims. In addition, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation has provided $ 600 million in insurance to victims.
Madoff was born on April 29, 1938 in Queens, New York, where he met his wife Ruth in high school. They had two children, both of whom worked in their father’s company. Mark committed suicide in 2010.
Peter, Madoff’s brother, also served a ten-year prison sentence for his involvement in the scheme. He was sentenced in 2012.