Bernard Madoff - Plea, Sentencing, and Prison Life

Plea, Sentencing, and Prison Life

On March 12, 2009, Madoff pled guilty to 11 federal felonies, including securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, making false statements, perjury, theft from an employee benefit plan, and making false filings with the SEC. The plea was the response to a criminal complaint filed two days earlier, which stated that over the past 20 years, Madoff had defrauded his clients of almost $65 billion in the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Madoff insisted he was solely responsible for the fraud. Madoff did not plea bargain with the government. Rather, he pleaded guilty to all charges. It has been speculated that Madoff pleaded guilty because he refused to cooperate with the authorities in order to avoid naming any associates and conspirators who were involved with him in the Ponzi scheme.

On November 3, 2009, David Friehling, Madoff's accounting front man pleaded guilty to securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, making false filings to the SEC, and obstructing the IRS. Madoff's right hand man, Frank DiPascali pleaded guilty in August 2009, and is awaiting bail.

In his plea allocution, Madoff stated he began his Ponzi scheme in 1991. He admitted he had never made any legitimate investments with his clients' money during this time. Instead, he said, he simply deposited the money into his personal business account at Chase Manhattan Bank. When his customers asked for withdrawals, he paid them out of the Chase account—a classic "robbing Peter to pay Paul" scenario. Chase and its successor, JPMorgan Chase, may have earned as much as $483 million from his bank account. He was committed to satisfying his clients' expectations of high returns, despite an economic recession. He admitted to false trading activities masked by foreign transfers and false SEC filings. He stated that he always intended to resume legitimate trading activity, but it proved "difficult, and ultimately impossible" to reconcile his client accounts. In the end, Madoff said, he realized that his scam would eventually be exposed.

On June 29, 2009, Chin sentenced Madoff to the maximum sentence of 150 years in federal prison. Madoff's lawyers originally asked the judge to impose a sentence of 7 years because of Madoff's old age.

Madoff apologized to his victims, saying,

I have left a legacy of shame, as some of my victims have pointed out, to my family and my grandchildren. This is something I will live in for the rest of my life. I'm sorry.

He added, "I know that doesn't help you," after his victims recommended to the judge that he receive a life sentence. Chin had not received any mitigating letters from friends or family testifying to Madoff's good deeds. "The absence of such support is telling," he said.

Chin also said that Madoff had not been forthcoming about his crimes. "I have a sense Mr. Madoff has not done all that he could do or told all that he knows," said Chin, calling the fraud "extraordinarily evil," "unprecedented" and "staggering," and that the sentence would deter others from committing similar frauds. Chin also agreed with prosecutors' contention that the fraud began at some point in the 1980s. He also noted that Madoff's crimes were "off the charts" since federal sentencing guidelines for fraud only go up to $400 million in losses.

Ruth did not attend court but issued a statement, saying "I am breaking my silence now because my reluctance to speak has been interpreted as indifference or lack of sympathy for the victims of my husband Bernie's crime, which is exactly the opposite of the truth. I am embarrassed and ashamed. Like everyone else, I feel betrayed and confused. The man who committed this horrible fraud is not the man whom I have known for all these years."