Madoff Sentenced to 150 Years

CHAD BRAY

Bloomberg News

Ira Sorkin, an attorney who represents Bernard Madoff, arrives to federal court in New York June 29.

NEW YORK -- 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.

At a packed hearing Monday, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan ordered Mr. Madoff, 71 years old, to serve the statutory maximum sentence in prison. Applause briefly broke out after the sentence was announced.

Bernard Madoff

Late Friday, Judge Chin signed a preliminary forfeiture order against Mr. Madoff for more than $170 billion, leaving the one-time chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market penniless.

"Here the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff's crimes were extraordinary evil," Judge Chin said.

On March 12, Mr. Madoff was ordered directly to jail after pleading guilty to 11 criminal counts, including securities fraud, mail fraud and money laundering, in a decades-long Ponzi scheme that bilked thousands of investors out of billions of dollars.

"I'm sorry; I know that doesn't help you," said Mr. Madoff, briefly turning to face his victims at the hearing prior to the judge's sentence.

He had run the scam for years through the investment advisory arm of his business, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, by promising steady returns and by presenting an air of exclusivity by not taking all comers and recruiting investors via friends and associates.

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The scheme defrauded a wide range of investors, including individuals, hedge funds, charities and trusts, such as a charitable trust established by Boston Properties Inc. Chairman and New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman.

When the fraud was revealed in December, some individuals went from being millionaires to being nearly destitute overnight.

Mr. Madoff claimed to have as much as $65 billion in his firm's accounts at the end of November, but prosecutors said the accounts only held a small fraction of that.

So far, the court-appointed trustee for Mr. Madoff's firm has identified about 1,341 accounts holders who suffered estimated losses of $13.2 billion. The trustee has recovered more than $1.2 billion for investors.

Last week, Mr. Madoff's lawyers asked for a sentence of as a little as 12 years, citing his life expectancy of about 13 years. Instead, Mr. Madoff received one of the stiffer sentences handed out to a white-collar defendant in New York federal court in recent years.