MADOFF Sent To Jail As Furious Victims Applaud

Come June, he could be looking at 150 years in prison.

Madoff sent to jail as furious victims applaud
NEW YORK – Careful to blame only himself, a "deeply sorry and ashamed" Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty Thursday to pulling off what could be the biggest, most spectacular swindle Wall Street has even seen, and was sent off to jail in handcuffs to the applause of his furious victims.
"I
realized that my arrest and this day would inevitably come," Madoff
said in a courtroom crammed with many of the investors he cheated out
of billions of dollars.
The 70-year-old
financier could get up to 150 years in prison at sentencing June 16 on
11 counts, including securities fraud and perjury. He could also be
fined and ordered to pay restitution to his victims and forfeit any
ill-gotten gains.
In a long, detailed statement delivered in a soft but steady voice, Madoff implicated no one but himself in the vast Ponzi scheme.
He said he started it as a short-term way to weather the early-1990s
recession, and was unable to extricate himself as the years went by.
"I
am actually grateful for this opportunity to publicly comment about my
crimes, for which I am deeply sorry and ashamed," Madoff said in his
first public comments about his crimes since the $65 billion scandal
broke in early December.
The scandal turned a
well-respected investment professional — Madoff was once chairman of
the Nasdaq exchange — into a symbol of Wall Street greed amid the economic meltdown. The public fury toward him was so great that he was known to wear a bulletproof vest to court.
U.S. District Judge Denny Chin
promptly revoked the $10 million bail that had allowed Madoff to remain
free since he confessed to his sons three months ago. In ordering him
jailed, the judge said Madoff had the means to flee and an incentive to
do so because of his age.
The court appearance
came as a disappointment to many of Madoff's investors, who hoped to
hear him say who might have helped him pull off the scam, and where the
money went.
Because Madoff pleaded guilty as
charged, without any kind of deal with prosecutors, he is under no
obligation to cooperate with them. As a result, some legal experts and
others have speculated that he is sacrificing himself to protect his
wife, his family and friends.
"He's trying to
save the rest of his family," said investor Judith Welling. "We need to
find out who else was involved, and we need, obviously, to freeze the
assets of all those people involved to help the victims."
There
was a smattering of applause after the judge announced Madoff would go
directly to jail — the drab, windowless high-rise Metropolitan
Correctional Center next door to the courthouse to await sentencing.
But that did not lessen his victims' anger or satisfy their desire for
retribution.
"So he spends the rest of his life in jail — is that justice? People's lives are ruined," said Adriane Biondo of Los Angeles,
one of five members of her family who lost money with Madoff. "He's
sitting in jail? That's awesome," she said sarcastically. "Where's the
money, Bernie?"
DeWitt Baker, an investor who
attended the hearing and said he lost more than $1 million with Madoff,
said: "I'd stone him to death."
Prosecutors
gave assurances they are investigating Madoff's wife and other family
members and employees to determine what role, if any, they played in
scam.
"A lot of resources and effort are being
expended, both to find assets and to find anyone else who may be
responsible for this fraud," federal prosecutor Marc Litt said.
In
court documents, prosecutors put the amount of the fraud at $64.8
billion. However, experts said that the actual loss was probably much
less and that the higher number reflects the false profits Madoff told investors they were making. So far, authorities have located only about $1 billion for investors.
Prosecutors
have already said low-level employees in Madoff's New York offices
participated by mailing out tens of thousands of phony monthly
statements and trading confirmations to make it look as if customers
were making money in the market.
Some investors
suspect their money ended up in the hands of Madoff's wife, Ruth. She
was not in court Thursday. But the mere mention of her name drew jeers
and laughter.
In one instance, defense lawyer Ira Sorkin was describing how
Madoff had, "at his wife's own expense," paid for security at his $7
million penthouse in Manhattan. Loud laughter erupted among some of the
more than 100 spectators crammed into the courtroom on the 24th floor
of the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan. There was more snickering
when Sorkin mentioned Mrs. Madoff's "small residence in France."
His thousands of victims included individuals, trusts, pension
funds, hedge funds and nonprofit organizations. The scheme wiped out
people's fortunes, ruined charities and foundations, and apparently
pushed at least two investors to commit suicide.
Investors big and small were swindled, from Florida retirees to
celebrities such as Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon and Hall of
Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax. Many of Madoff's victims were Jews and
Jewish charities, which trusted him because he is Jewish. Those cheated
included Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.
In court Thursday, Madoff — a stocky figure, clad in a charcoal-gray
suit, with swept-back, wavy gray hair — said he began the scheme during
the last recession, when "I felt compelled to satisfy my clients'
expectations, at any cost." He did not put his investors' money into
the market, as he claimed. Instead, it was a Ponzi scheme, or a pyramid, in which early investors are paid off with money taken in from later ones.
"When I began the Ponzi scheme I believed it would end shortly and I
would be able to extricate myself and my clients from the scheme," he
said. "However, this proved difficult, and ultimately impossible, and
as the years went by I realized that my arrest and this day would
inevitably come."
In Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said: "The president is glad that swift justice will happen."
Gibbs said the Obama administration will do everything possible
to ensure strict enforcement of securities regulations "and hope that
through those actions that that kind of greed and irresponsibility and
that kind of criminal activity never happens again."
Before the court hearing, helicopters circled above the
courthouse, and federal officers with automatic weapons stood outside.
Investors signed in before entering the courtroom.
"I wanted him to see some of the faces of the people he lied to
and destroyed," said Cynthia Friedman, 59, of Jericho, N.Y. She and her
husband, Richard, said Madoff defrauded them of their life savings of
$3 million. They learned it was gone months before Richard Friedman was
supposed to retire — a plan now on hold.
Madoff did not look at any of the three investors who spoke at
the hearing, even when one of them turned in his direction and tried to
address him. At the hint of a confrontation, a marshal sitting behind
Madoff stood up, and the judge directed the investor to speak directly
to the bench.
Madoff told the court that he falsely told investors he was
employing a "split strike conversion strategy": He claimed he invested
their money in a batch of stocks from the Standard & Poor's
100 that closely tracked the price movements of the index. He also told
investors that he would periodically pull their money out of the market
and put it in Treasury bills. And he claimed he bought stock options to hedge against losses. All of that was false.
Madoff also said that to fool his clients into thinking he was buying
and selling stocks, he transferred money from his fraudulent operations
into his wholesale stock-trading firm, which he otherwise described as
an honest, legitimate business.
Afterward, Burt Ross, a lawyer from Englewood, N.J., who lost
$5 million in Madoff's swindle, said: "It's a little bit like seeing
the devil."
___
Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz and David B. Caruso contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090312/ap_on_bi_ge/madoff_scandal

So how much time do we think he'll get? I'm betting on 10 to 12, time served and with good behavior he'll be out in 6 to 7.

He's only sorry that he got caught.

which still boggles my mind. You've got 50 bil and can't find a good place to hide? You can't buy a non-extradition country along with their army??

JReed wrote:He's only sorry that he got caught.

which still boggles my mind. You've got 50 bil and can't find a good place to hide? You can't buy a non-extradition country along with their army??

EXACTLY jreed! which leads me to believe it was THE GAME he was addicted to more so than the actual money. the power of POWER drives people to do extraordinary things - good and evil.

i've watched his actions, and more so the expressions on his face through this thing. he's totally detached from the destruction he brought to sooooooo many lives - has no remorse whatsoever. he's even said that he knew he would caught one of these days, but he still kept going - like a junkie on heroine.

imo, he's an evil genius. i think what he managed to pull off, even though is was all bad, was beyond brilliant. makes me wonder now what he could have accomplished if he had applied this kind of effort to something with a positive outcome..?

CV

btw... the question i have now - where's all the money

.

CarolinaHound wrote:So how much time do we think he'll get? I'm betting on 10 to 12, time served and with good behavior he'll be out in 6 to 7.

i think he'll get the MAX ch - and he deserves it. at 70 yrs. old, he's most likely gonna die in jail anyway, so to appease the ones who were victimized by him, i think the court has to throw everything they possibly can at him.

next question? - who else was involved and where are those people now?

CV

Susan aka CV wrote:

CarolinaHound wrote:So how much time do we think he'll get? I'm betting on 10 to 12, time served and with good behavior he'll be out in 6 to 7.

i think he'll get the MAX ch - and he deserves it. at 70 yrs. old, he's most likely gonna die in jail anyway, so to appease the ones who were victimized by him, i think the court has to throw everything they possibly can at him.

next question? - who else was involved and where are those people now?

CV

I don't think he'll get any where close to what he deserves. With all the money he had he could have dissapeared. There's a reason he went in and gave his sob story. He made some sort of deal.

Susan aka CV wrote:

JReed wrote:He's only sorry that he got caught.

which still boggles my mind. You've got 50 bil and can't find a good place to hide? You can't buy a non-extradition country along with their army??

EXACTLY jreed! which leads me to believe it was THE GAME he was addicted to more so than the actual money. the power of POWER drives people to do extraordinary things - good and evil.

i've watched his actions, and more so the expressions on his face through this thing. he's totally detached from the destruction he brought to sooooooo many lives - has no remorse whatsoever. he's even said that he knew he would caught one of these days, but he still kept going - like a junkie on heroine.

imo, he's an evil genius. i think what he managed to pull off, even though is was all bad, was beyond brilliant. makes me wonder now what he could have accomplished if he had applied this kind of effort to something with a positive outcome..?

CV

btw... the question i have now - where's all the money

.

Absolutely. Once you've made your first billion $, what are you going to do with the second? Buy another 5 Ferrari's? Another house in Miami that gets used once a year?

Susan aka CV wrote:

JReed wrote:He's only sorry that he got caught.

which still boggles my mind. You've got 50 bil and can't find a good place to hide? You can't buy a non-extradition country along with their army??

EXACTLY jreed! which leads me to believe it was THE GAME he was addicted to more so than the actual money. the power of POWER drives people to do extraordinary things - good and evil.

i've watched his actions, and more so the expressions on his face through this thing. he's totally detached from the destruction he brought to sooooooo many lives - has no remorse whatsoever. he's even said that he knew he would caught one of these days, but he still kept going - like a junkie on heroine.

imo, he's an evil genius. i think what he managed to pull off, even though is was all bad, was beyond brilliant. makes me wonder now what he could have accomplished if he had applied this kind of effort to something with a positive outcome..?

CV

btw... the question i have now - where's all the money

.

the smart money is on the theory that the money seems to be hidden with the aid and abetment of his wife, some family members and some associates. The feds plan to investigate all, including lowly employees who worked in the mail room stuffing monthly bogus growth statements to clients. another assumption is that madoff made a deal of sorts and pleaded guilty so that his family and others would not be investigated and that he has fashioned himself a sacrificial lamb, if you will, for the sake of his family and future heirs.
what a guy.

HotParadox wrote:

Susan aka CV wrote:

JReed wrote:He's only sorry that he got caught.

which still boggles my mind. You've got 50 bil and can't find a good place to hide? You can't buy a non-extradition country along with their army??

EXACTLY jreed! which leads me to believe it was THE GAME he was addicted to more so than the actual money. the power of POWER drives people to do extraordinary things - good and evil.

i've watched his actions, and more so the expressions on his face through this thing. he's totally detached from the destruction he brought to sooooooo many lives - has no remorse whatsoever. he's even said that he knew he would caught one of these days, but he still kept going - like a junkie on heroine.

imo, he's an evil genius. i think what he managed to pull off, even though is was all bad, was beyond brilliant. makes me wonder now what he could have accomplished if he had applied this kind of effort to something with a positive outcome..?

CV

btw... the question i have now - where's all the money

.

the smart money is on the theory that the money seems to be hidden with the aid and abetment of his wife, some family members and some associates. The feds plan to investigate all, including lowly employees who worked in the mail room stuffing monthly bogus growth statements to clients. another assumption is that madoff made a deal of sorts and pleaded guilty so that his family and others would not be investigated and that he has fashioned himself a sacrificial lamb, if you will, for the sake of his family and future heirs.
what a guy.

honestly hp, i don't think we'll ever know the extent of who, what and how this madoff thing was pulled off. from what i've read/heard, there have been numerous red flags reported about his guy to NASDAQ, the SEC & IRS over the years that were simply ignored. my gut tells me there are people in high places who have pocketed their fair share of these fake investments in exchange for turning a blind eye to what madoff was doing.

and i also think the investors themselves bear some responsiblity in their own demise here. i mean seriously - god knows i'm no financial expert by any stretch of the imagination, but common sense goes a long way some times - and if one is receiving monthly/quarterly statements that show a consistent double digit % gain on stock investments, i believe i would question that..... wouldn't you

it's one of those "if something seems too good to be true - it probably is" things....

i think GREED drove the bus in this mess on both sides of the fence.

CV

everything you said, ditto. i'm pretty confident this thing is going to mushroom even though he pled guilty. i just hope it doesn't take years for all the snakes to be forced out of their holes.

He's old and he already spent all of the money (so he says).

If it is true, he now has the taxpayers providing him with meals and a roof over his head till he dies.

I guess it's a win-win for Madoff.

Americanadian wrote:

this is so funny it almost isn't sad.