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US proposes 150 years for Madoff

(New York Times)
Updated: 2009-06-28 11:10

Federal prosecutors recommended on Friday that Bernard L. Madoff be sentenced to 150 years in prison for conducting his enormous worldwide Ponzi scheme.

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.

Bernard L. Madoff is seen in this file photo. [New York Times]

"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.

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"The sheer scale of the Madoff fraud calls for severe punishment," Mr. Litt continued. Comparing his crime with others that have come before the federal courts in New York "only underscores the enormity of Madoff’s offenses," he added.

Also Friday, prosecutors announced that Judge Chin has entered a preliminary order directing Mr. Madoff to pay just over $170 billion in forfeited assets. The order strips Mr. Madoff of all his property and leaves $2.5 million in assets for his wife, Ruth Madoff.

Since the crime began, about US$170 billion flowed into the bank account Mr. Madoff used to operate the fraud, according to the government’s memo. Looking only at customer accounts opened since 1996, US$13.2 billion in losses have already been documented and the government expects that tally to increase.

Given the magnitude of the crime, Mr. Litt said a "reasonable" sentence would be 150 years — "or, alternatively, a term of years that both would assure that Madoff will remain in prison for life, and forcefully would promote general deterrence."

Ira Lee Sorkin, a lawyer for Mr. Madoff, suggested in a letter to Judge Chin on Tuesday that a prison term of 12 years would effectively be a life sentence because Mr. Madoff’s remaining life expectancy is roughly 13 years. Or, a term of 15 to 20 years would provide adequate deterrence without deviating too much from the 15-year norm for white-collar criminals sentenced for large-scale frauds, Mr. Sorkin said.

Mr. Sorkin and his defense team referred in the letter to an atmosphere of "mob vengeance" surrounding Mr. Madoff. They urged the court to consider that he essentially turned himself in.

Other prominent white-collar criminals sentenced recently have received longer terms than Mr. Sorkin is seeking. For example, Bernard J. Ebbers, the former WorldCom chief executive, who was 63 at the time of his sentencing, received 25 years, and Jeffrey K. Skilling, the former Enron chief executive, was sentenced to 24 years.

More than 100 victims of Mr. Madoff’s scheme have filed emotional letters with the court, nearly all asking Judge Chin to give him the harshest sentence that the law allows. A handful of them have requested to speak at his sentencing on Monday.