Madoff sentenced to 150 years in prison
NEW YORK (MCT) — One hundred and fifty years.
Bernard Madoff showed no emotion when U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin on Monday sentenced the convicted Wall Street swindler to the maximum for pulling off the largest Ponzi scheme in history.
“Symbolism is important to deter future crimes and as retribution,” Chin said. “Mr. Madoff’s crimes were extraordinarily evil.”
The judge said he hoped the sentence will help victims heal.
Chin said that trustees had said Madoff had not been helpful in their efforts to find stolen funds. Chin said Madoff, 71, only cooperated after his arrest.
“I do not get the sense Mr. Madoff has done all he could or told all that he knows,” Chin said.
The judge said that he had received “not a single letter ... attesting to Mr. Madoff’s good deeds. The absence of such support is telling.”
Madoff earlier told a hushed lower Manhattan courtroom Monday that he left a “legacy of shame” and had deceived his wife, their two sons and his brothers in swindling thousands of investors out of billions of dollars.
“I thought I could get out of it,” Madoff said. “I made an error of judgment ... I am responsible for a great deal of pain.”
At the end of his statement, Madoff turned around and faced investors.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know that doesn’t help you.”
After the sentencing, Norma Hill, a victim, said she felt no closure.
“It’s very easy to say something like that after the fact,” Hill said of Madoff’s apology.
She said that, awhile ago, Madoff “put his arms around my shoulders and assured me everything was safe” when in fact it was not.
“The judge made a courageous decision,” Hill said.
Miriam Siegman, 65, of Manhattan, said she was furious at government agencies and urged that the system be changed.
“It’s immaterial to me what sentence he receives,” Siegman said after the sentencing. She said she refused to remain in the courtroom while Madoff spoke.
“The issue is, for me, that this never happens to anyone again,” Siegman said.
She said that she checked with the Securities and Exchange Commission before investing with Madoff in 1992 and was told he was “clean as a whistle. If I checked in 2000, they would have said the same thing,” Siegman said.
Madoff, Siegman said, “took away my ability to pay rent, to eat. I’m on food stamps now.”
Sharon Lissauer, also of Manhattan, said it made her feel a little better that Madoff turned around to address the victims.
“But it’s not going to bring the victims back their money,” Lissauer said. “If he was sorry, he wouldn’t have done this all these years. What really kills me is I entrusted my mother’s money. She just died.”
Before the disgraced financier spoke in court, victims of Madoff, many of them tearful, told the judge that they wanted Madoff’s attorneys to keep looking for stolen funds and they hoped the swindler spent the rest of his life in prison.
Madoff’s attorney Ira Lee Sorkin told the judge that Madoff should receive no more than 12 years.
“Punishment should not be about vengeance,” Sorkin told the judge.
Madoff victim Dominic Ambrosino, a former New York City corrections officer, told the court he and his wife, Ronnie Sue, lost all their savings by investing with Madoff.
The feeling of losing it all is “truly unlike anything you can ever describe,” Ambrosino said.
The couple had sold their Long Island house and bought a motor home and had been traveling for the past four years until December. Friends have been letting them park on their properties for the summer, but the couple doesn’t know where they will live after August.
“If I should die, my wife would be left with nothing,” Ambrosino said.
Ambrosino, 48, said the “most devastating” part of the ordeal was losing their freedom and “time to hold our hands as we walk.”
Of Madoff, he said, “We know he’ll be in prison much the same way as he imprisoned us.” He added, “I would like someone in the court today to tell us: How long is our sentence?”
In court, Lissauer said: “It’s been a nightmare. I think I’m going to wake up, but it keeps getting worse. I was always so careful with my money. I entrusted everything to Mr. Madoff.”
She said that included inheritance money and money she earned from modeling. She asked Madoff’s family and lawyers to keep searching for funds to re-pay victims “so they can have a little of their life back.”
“You killed my spirit and shattered my dreams,” Lissauer said. “For the first time in my life, I am very, very frightened of the future.”
(Staff writers Ellen Yan, Anthony M. DeStefano, John Valenti, Kathleen Kerr, Keiko Morris and Emi Endo contributed to this report.)
