'Nuff said:
Madoff Slammed With 150-Year Sentence
Confessed Scam Artist Gets Maximum Sentence; Says He'll Live With "This Torment For The Rest Of My Life"
(CBS/ AP) Last Updated 11:35 a.m. EDT
Bernard Madoff, the former Wall Street financier that pleaded guilty to defrauding clients out of billions in an unprecedented Ponzi scheme, was sentenced to 150 years in prison Monday.
It was a crime of epic proportions - one that wiped out fortunes, drained retirement nest eggs, ruined charities and foundations, and even pushed some investors to commit suicide.
Several hundred spectators piled into the federal courthouse in Manhattan to hear Judge Denny Chin's ruling on Madoff's fate.
Before the sentencing, Madoff apologized to his family and to the victims of his multibillion-dollar fraud scheme.
The 71-year-old financier said that he "will live with this pain, this torment, for the rest of my life."
Madoff also expects "to live out his years in prison," his lawyer said.
Ten of Madoff's victims were given the opportunity to address the court.
Dominic Ambrosino called the fraud an "indescribably heinous crime" and says he has no credit and can't get a mortgage.
Tom Fitzmaurice said Madoff stole from the rich, the poor and the "in between. He had no values."
He said "my life will never be the same."
Also before the reading the sentencing, Judge Chin said that the federal probation office recommended Madoff get a 50-year prison term.
Madoff, 71, has been jailed since his guilty plea in March. Since that time, authorities have been picking apart his empire of personal wealth in an effort to at least partially compensate his former investors.
Last week, a judge issued a preliminary $171 billion forfeiture order stripping Madoff of all his personal property, including real estate, investments, and $80 million in assets his wife Ruth had claimed were hers. The order left her with $2.5 million.
The terms require the Madoffs to sell a $7 million Manhattan apartment where Ruth Madoff still lives. An $11 million estate in Palm Beach, Florida, a $4 million home in Montauk and a $2.2 million boat will be put on the market as well.
Before Madoff became a symbol of Wall Street greed, the former Nasdaq chairman had earned a reputation as a trusted money manager with a Midas touch. Even as the market fluctuated, clients of his secretive investment advisory business — from Florida retirees to celebrities such as Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon and Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax — for decades enjoyed steady double-digit returns.
But late last year, Madoff made a dramatic confession: Authorities say he pulled his sons aside and told them it was "all just one big lie."
Since then, Madoff has insisted that he acted alone, describing a separate wholesale stock-trading firm run by his sons and brother as honest and legitimate.
Aside from an accountant accused of cooking Madoff's books, no one else has been criminally charged. But the family, including his wife, and brokerage firms who recruited investors have come under intense scrutiny by the FBI, regulators and a court-appointed trustee overseeing the liquidation of Madoff's assets.
The trustee and prosecutors have sought to go after assets to compensate thousands of burned victims who have filed claims against Madoff. How much is available to pay them remains unknown, though it's expected to be only a fraction of the astronomical losses associated with the fraud.
The $171 billion forfeiture figure used by prosecutors merely mirrors the amount they estimate that, over decades, "flowed into the principal account to perpetrate the Ponzi scheme." The statements sent to investors showing their accounts were worth as much as $65 billion were fiction.
The investigation has found that in reality, Madoff never made any investments, instead using the money from new investors to pay returns to existing clients — and to finance a lavish lifestyle for his family.
In bankruptcy filings, Trustee Irving Picard say family members "used customers accounts as though they were their own," putting Madoff's maid, boat captain and house-sitter in Florida on the company payroll and paying nearly $1 million in fees at high-end golf clubs on Long Island and in Florida.
Picard has sought to reclaim ill-gotten gains by freezing Madoff's business bank accounts and selling legitimate portions of his firm. (Its season tickets for the Mets went for $38,100.) He's also sued big money managers and investors for billions of dollars, claiming they were Madoff cronies who also cashed in on the fraud.
The defendants include leading philanthropists Stanley Chais and Jeffry Picower — from whom Picard is seeking at least $5.1 billion alleged to have come out of victims' pockets — and hedge fund manager J. Ezra Merkin. All have denied any wrongdoing
