Bernie Madoff, the disgraced and imprisoned Ponzi schemer, died in prison.
The 82-year-old, who was sentenced to 150 years in federal prison in 2009 for running the largest Ponzi scheme in history, died at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.
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In March 2020, Madoff sought an early release from prison, claiming that his health was deteriorating. In a court filing from Feb. 2020, Madoff’s lawyers said he had less than 18 months to live because of chronic kidney failure that has progressed to “end-stage renal disease.”
“Last year Bernie Madoff asked his sentencing court to grant him compassionate release so he could die at home with his remaining friends and family. At the time, Bernie had a life expectancy of less than 18 months. Bernie’s sentencing judge denied that request, despite Bernie’s terminal kidney disease and expressed remorse for his crimes,” his lawyer, Brandon Sample, said in a statement.
“Today, Bernie Madoff passed away at the age of 82,” he added. “Bernie, up until his death, lived with guilt and remorse for his crimes. Although the crimes Bernie was convicted of have come to define who he was — he was also a father and a husband. He was soft spoken and an intellectual. Bernie was by no means perfect. But no man is.”
Madoff had been imprisoned since he pleaded guilty to financial crimes, theft, perjury, and money laundering after being accused of stealing billions of dollars from his clients, many of whom lost their life savings in the Ponzi scheme.
He served as the chairman of the Nasdaq for several years in the 1990s, amassing a fortune. Madoff had been using money from new investors to pay back earlier ones. His scheming, which went on for decades, defrauded as many as 37,000 people in 136 countries by the time he was arrested, per CNBC.
A trustee appointed by the court has recovered more than $13 billion that investors put into Madoff’s business, leaving about $4.5 billion outstanding. At the time of Madoff’s arrest, he had been using fake bank statements that said his holdings were worth $60 billion.
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The scandal had a profound impact on his family. Madoff’s son Mark committed suicide on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest in 2010, while Madoff’s brother Peter, who helped run the business, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2012, even though he claimed he was unaware of his brother’s scheme. Madoff’s other son, Andrew, died of cancer in 2014. His daughter, Ruth, is still alive.
