New York Law Journal, which is headlined Madoff Lawyer Asks Judge to Ignore Hysteria, Impose 12-Year Sentence, the legal team for Bernie Madoff has come up with an interesting proposed sentencing number:
If you are arguing that Bernard L. Madoff should be given a break, you work with what you have. Attempting to mitigate a maximum sentence of 150 years for a client whose name has become synonymous with greed, defense attorney Ira Lee Sorkin asked a federal judge this morning to set aside the hysteria generated by of the largest Ponzi scheme in history and give Mr. Madoff only 12 years in prison.
As detailed in pieces in the
New York Law Journal, federal prosecutors recommended on Friday that Bernard L. Madoff be sentenced to 150 years in prison for conducting his enormous worldwide Ponzi scheme.
Here is more from the NYTimes piece: That term is the maximum established for his crime under nonbinding federal sentencing guidelines. Although it would be a purely symbolic sentence even for a young prisoner and Mr. Madoff is 71 prosecutors said it was warranted by the “extraordinary dimensions” of his crimes.
“He engaged in wholesale fraud for more than a generation,” said Marc Litt, an assistant United States attorney, in a memo sent to Federal District Judge Denny Chin, who will sentence Mr. Madoff on Monday. Although Mr. Madoff testified in March that his Ponzi scheme began about 1991, Mr. Litt said in his brief that a confidential presentencing report shows it began at least a decade earlier.
Madoff gets sentenced to max of 150 years in federal prison!
Early reports from the MSM says Bernie Madoff gets the max from Judge Denny Chin, 150 years in federal prison, which was the most he could get for all the counts to which Madoff pled guilty. Of course, with a possible 15% off for good behavior, Madoff could get out as early at 2138.
Here is early coverage from the
Wall Street Journal:
Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison Monday, meaning he will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars after admitting in March to running one of the largest and longest financial frauds in recent memory.