Sentenced to 150 years

Madoff Hires Consultant to Find Best Possible Jail

Bernard Madoff has hired a veteran prison consultant to help him to find the best possible jail in which to serve his 150-year sentence for Wall Street’s biggest fraud.

After his sentencing this week Madoff, now Prisoner No 1727-054, met Herb Hoelter, of the National Center for Institutions and Alternatives, whose previous clients include the jailed Sotheby’s chairman Alfred Taubman and the financiers Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky.

The draconian maximum sentence imposed by the judge means that Madoff, 71, will be assigned to a tougher category of prison than most white-collar criminals.


He could be forced to mingle with murderers, rapists, drug-dealers and white supremacist gangs with a hatred of Jews. Madoff is Jewish.

He could even find himself incarcerated with terrorists in the infamous “Supermax” jail in Florence, Colorado.

“He was incredibly disappointed. He knew he was going to spend the rest of his life in prison. I don’t think that was ever an issue,” Hoelter told The Times. “But it’s patently unfair to cast him as a symbol of all evil.”

Federal convicts are assigned to minimum, low, medium, high-security prison, or even the sole Supermax facility, by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons using a score-card known as Form BP-337 to calculate an inmate’s “Security Point Total”. A first-time non-violent white-collar criminal convicted in a U.S. federal court would normally qualify for incarceration at a minimum-security “prison camp” with easygoing rules and no perimeter fence. But the length of Madoff’s jail term means that he has no hope at all of going to one of them.

Bernie Madoff's office for rent (Photos)

NEW YORK (AP) -- Behind unmarked doors on the 17th floor of a red granite high-rise known as the Lipstick Building, FBI agents still labor to unravel a case like no other.

The agents -- already there for more than six months -- say the chore is so daunting, they need to stay in the Manhattan skyscraper at least another year.

And by the way: They intend to hang on to the copy machine.

The former headquarters of Bernard Madoff are a home away from home for the FBI and, as of July 1, a leasing opportunity for any potential tenant who can stomach its status as ground zero of the largest securities swindle in history.

"Some people may see a stigma associated with it," building manager Russell Freeman said on a recent tour of the piece of the three-floor firm that's been put on the market. "But he's out of there. His bad karma has gone with him. ... Space is space."

Space once used by Madoff himself -- a fishbowl corner office with partial views of the East River -- has been emptied of most furniture and paperwork, like the rest of the 19th floor. Only a pair of built-in cabinets and a wall-mounted television, easily 10 years old, remain.

Across the room is a matching corner office where Madoff's brother Peter worked. Two smaller glass offices were for Madoff sons Andrew and Mark. Two filing cabinet drawers still bear stickers with the name "Andy Madoff."



The three men, whose names remain on an automated directory in the building lobby, oversaw a trading floor for Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities that's now a ghost town, dead silent except for the hiss of an air conditioner.

The color theme throughout -- from the refrigerator in a galley kitchen to the trading floor desks to the many conference rooms -- is the minimalist black and ash gray favored by the 71-year-old former Nasdaq chairman, one of the original tenants when the building opened in the mid-1980s.



Floors 17 through 19 became part of a crime scene later last year when the once-prominent money manager confessed that his secretive investment advisory group actually was a massive Ponzi scheme that wiped out thousands of investors. He was sentenced to 150 years in prison last month and on Thursday decided not to appeal the sentence.

The disgraced financier has claimed he alone conned clients by recycling their money to create phantom wealth. But investigators have said they suspect members of Madoff insiders were involved and have been camped out on the 17th floor searching for evidence of a wider conspiracy.

Many of the records were paper or on microfilm and date back decades. Authorities say the firm relied on an old IBM computer to churn out statements that were fictitious.

When the scandal broke, news crews and burned investors flocked to the 34-story skyscraper -- shaped like an open lipstick tube -- to measure the financial wreckage. They didn't get far: Madoff's firm had been sealed off from the public by an army of FBI agents, federal regulators and a trustee appointed to liquidate the business assets.

Since then, the trustee has sold one of Madoff's legitimate trading operations to a new broker-dealer firm that took over the 18th floor. A staircase connecting the 18th and 19th floors will be removed, Freeman said.

As for the 17th floor, trustee Irving Picard wrote in court papers that the FBI "has advised me that they will require access to the space until, at least, approximately July of 2010." It also wanted to continue using a leased Xerox copying machine there. The cost will be covered by an industry group that compensates victims of securities fraud.

Sharing the 17th floor in separate office space is a discount brokerage headed by Wall Street veteran Muriel Siebert, the first woman to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange in 1967 and the only tenant allowed a dog. Siebert had a sublet with Madoff and is now paying rent to the trustee.

What remains is the 16,182-square-foot 19th floor. A bankruptcy judge recently authorized the trustee to cancel the Madoff lease there through 2012 with landlord Metropolitan Real Estate Investors, creating the vacancy in a sagging commerical real estate market.

Freeman wouldn't say what Madoff paid in rent, adding that no price has been set for the floor. There have been some feelers, but no firm offers.

Any takers who don't remodel, he said, "will certainly have to like dark colors."

Fellow Inmates Looking To Beat Up Madoff

Fellow Jailbirds Looking to Pluck Madoff Up

Swindler has gone from caviar and brie to fillet-o-fish and mac and cheese.

Bernard Madoff has gone from Ponzi to con(zi) and he may find that life in the big house is not all its shanked up to be.

Fellow inmates at the Butner, N.C., federal lock-up have their sights on Madoff and are looking to rough him up to earn some cool points, according to the New York Post.

"Some of the guys were talking about smacking him around a little, just to get the notoriety of it," a source, who has a relative in the clink with Madoff, told the Post.

Madoff could be most threatened by other white-collar crime inmates, who may have some connection to the more than 1,000 people he defrauded out of upwards of $65 billion over the course of 20 years.

But the 71-year-old also has some fans behind bars, said the Post's source, thanks to the fact that he didn't snitch.

"He's got a lot of respect from other inmates because he didn't tell on anybody, he didn't take everybody down with him," the source told the paper.

Madoff has even gotten an honest job (finally) in the prison's engraving section -- making desk and door nameplates for seven and a half hours a day, and joins his fellow inmates in "the yard" for recreation. Last week he was hanging out with the other jailbirds watching a game of dominoes.

His eating habits have also become more pedestrian than the haute cuisine he may have gotten used to as a Wall Street big shot -- last Thursday, Madoff dined on fish fillet with a side of macaroni and cheese.

The Post's source called Madoff a"regular dude," and a really good guy" who "holds his head up," but said the fallen financier did show some emotion when talking about his wife.

"He said that his wife was mad at him because the paparazzi won't leave her alone," the source said, adding that Madoff's eyes welled up with tears as he spoke.

Madoff's ChieF feeder sails the Seas in his $30million Yacht

First Madoff Interview: Can't believe I got away with It

In his first prison interview, a buff-looking Bernie Madoff said he couldn't believe he got away with his massive Ponzi scheme for so long.

"There were several times that I met with the SEC and thought 'they got me,'" Madoff told Joseph Cotchett, a San Francisco lawyer threatening to sue his wife, sons and brother on behalf of a group of victims.

Cotchett said he and his partner, Nancy Fineman, met with Madoff for four and a half hours Tuesday afternoon at the federal prison in Butner, NC, where Madoff is serving his 150-year sentence.

"He looked pretty good and seems to be working out," said Cotchett. "He looked a lot better than he has in some months since I've seen photographs of him."

Cotchett said Madoff was "very articulate, very direct" and did not appear to hold back anything. "He talked about how he pulled it off, how many years he got away with it," the lawyer said.

"I was surprised at how candid he was," Cotchett told ABCNews.com after the session, the first time Madoff has talked with outside lawyers. Madoff refused to cooperate with the FBI after his initial, largely untruthful confession last December.

Cotchett said Madoff "did not dodge" any of the questions he asked and that Madoff's lawyer did not object to any of the questions.

"He obviously wanted to speak with us because in his opinion, certain members of his family knew nothing about it, had no involvement of it," said Cotchett who was able to arrange the unusual session after threatening to sue Madoff's wife Ruth.

"He cares about Ruth," said Cotchett, "but he doesn't give a ---- about his two sons, Mark and Andrew." The sons have not spoken with their father or mother since Madoff's arrest on December 11. They say there were unaware of the fraud scheme until he confessed to them as his money was running out and it appeared the crime would be exposed.

Cotchett said he did not yet know if he would name Ruth or the sons in the lawsuit, but that he was almost certain to name Madoff's brother, Peter, who served as the firm's chief compliance officer.

Peter Madoff has declined to comment but others with knowledge of the case say he maintains he did not know of the scam until two days before his brother's arrest.

Click here to go behind the scenes of Brian Ross' investigation into Bernie and Ruth Madoff.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Madoff/story?id=7957157&page=1

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http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Madoff/

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