Bernie Madoff is leaving federal court in New York on March 10, 2009.
Jin Lee | Bloomberg via Getty Images
Some people might argue that Bernie Madoff was massively overpaid even at just 24 cents an hour to work as a jailer.
Madoff, the late king of the Ponzi scheme who ripped off thousands of people for billions of dollars, earned just $ 710 after working nearly 3,000 hours while in a federal prison in North Carolina for 12 years before dying of kidney failure in April, as newly published records show.
And when he died at the age of 82, Madoff didn’t leave much of his personal belongings: eight AAA batteries, four religious paperback books, a Casio calculator, four packets of popcorn, a packet of ramen soup, a box of filtered fish, and not much more.
Bureau of Prison records, first reported by online publication The City, also show that while Madoff received generally positive reviews for his performance as a carer, at some point a supervisor stated that he was “more closely monitored than most of the others need “and” not “very reliably.”
This was certainly the case when Madoff ran Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities in New York, where for decades he led a luxurious lifestyle and satisfied clients with constant investment returns on their portfolios.
These returns turned out to be a deception.
In 2008, federal prosecutors accused Madoff of running the largest Ponzi scheme in history, using money from some investors to distribute alleged profits to others.
Madoff’s sons, Mark and Andrew, had told authorities that he had confessed to them that his business was an outright fraud.
Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 crimes in Manhattan federal court in 2009 and was sentenced to 150 years in prison.
Mark Madoff killed himself in 2010 at the age of 46, two years from the day this father was arrested. Andrew Madoff died of lymphoma four years later at the age of 48.
While in custody in Butner, North Carolina, Madoff served as the first vigilante in a section of the detention center dedicated to educational programs. He later asked to be transferred to work in the chapel area, The City noted in its report.
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Last year, Madoff’s attorney revealed in court records that the sociopathic con man was terminally ill with kidney disease when he asked a judge to release Madoff early on compassionate grounds.
Manhattan federal judge Denny Chin dismissed the motion in June 2020, ruling that Madoff had “committed one of the most egregious financial times of all time” and that “many people are still suffering from it.”
About 500 victims wrote to oppose Madoff’s release.
One of Madoff’s victims had written to Chin, “I wholeheartedly believe that my husband would be alive today if he did not deal with the stress and emotional distress that the loss of almost all of our money has meant to our family. “
In December, the Justice Department announced that the Madoff Victim Fund had distributed a total of $ 3.2 billion to nearly 37,000 people betrayed by Madoff. This dollar amount represents more than 80% of the total casualty losses.
The fund’s money comes from recovering assets associated with Madoff. The fund predicts that it will ultimately return more than $ 4 billion in total assets.
