Bernie Madoff gets 150 years
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aLjQCCx9LJF0
Bernard Madoff was sentenced to a prison term six times longer than that meted out to the chief executives of WorldCom Inc. and Enron Corp. He’s likely to serve his time in a decidedly harsher prison as well.
Sentenced to 150 years, Madoff will probably be sent to a medium- or high-security prison, probably in the northeastern U.S, according to lawyers and prison consultants. Even worse for Madoff, fellow inmates serving life sentences may want “to make a name for themselves” by harming the ex-money manager, a former inmate said. The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which will decide where he’s jailed, may isolate Madoff to protect him from other prisoners.
“If they see an opportunity to take that man out and be in the paper and make a name for themselves, what do they have to lose,” Steve Vincent, a former police officer jailed for theft who now runs Federal Prison Consultant Services in Louisville, Kentucky, said in an interview. “Wherever he goes, they’re going to put him in solitary.”
The Bureau of Prisons hasn’t decided where Madoff will be jailed, said spokeswoman Felicia Ponce. Madoff’s 150-year term, the seriousness of his crimes and the judge’s recommendation that he be jailed in the northeast will be factors in the decision. Madoff asked to do his time in Otisville, New York, a medium-security lockup 70 miles northwest of Manhattan.
Madoff won’t wind up in the minimum-security camp that’s next to the tougher prison. Inmates serving more than 10 years aren’t eligible for the unfenced and un-walled camps, Ponce said.
Madoff, 71, was sentenced today for a decades-long fraud that cheated investors of billions of dollars. Prosecutors said Madoff’s investors lost at least $13 billion. Investors were told they had about $65 billion before the fraud came to light.
If sent to a medium- or high-security prison, Madoff will join other non-violent criminals who have wound up in the harshest of confines.
Former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers and former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling are jailed at low-security facilities. Camps and low-security prisons provide dormitory or cubicle housing. Camps have no fencing around their perimeter. The tougher prisons that await Madoff are surrounded by electronic detection systems and house inmates in locked cells.
Ellis said he expected Madoff, who has spent the last three months in a Manhattan lockup, to be moved to a high-security penitentiary because of his notoriety and his lengthy term. Although he’d be with lifers who may want to harm him, he’d have more security, Ellis said. If threatened, Madoff would be moved to isolation by prison officials, he said.
Inside prison, Madoff will begin a life of unending sameness. He’d wake at 6 a.m., be put to work until 3:30 p.m., have free time until 9 p.m., and go to bed at 11:30 p.m., Ponce said. His job will pay from 12 cents to 40 cents an hour, depending on his assignment and its seniority. He’ll be allotted 300 minutes of phone calls a month.
“There’s generally a walking track they can use, a basketball court,” Ponce said.
In isolation, Madoff would be in his cell 23 hours a day, and his hour outside would be spent alone, in a space that Vincent compared to “a dog pen.”
“He’s going to be a real headache for the Bureau of Prisons for the rest of his life,” Ellis said.
The case is U.S. v. Madoff, 09-cr-00213, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
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150 years eh?..good riddance..but really, bernie shouldnt have to wear the can for everything that went wrong in this financial crisis..he is as guilty as sin and will die in prison but others have gotten away with this heist with nothing to fear..what about the lawmakers who made it possible for bernie to carry on the way he did?
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