Bernie Madoff, notorious for orchestrating the largest Ponzi scheme in American history, has petitioned the Justice Department to ask President Trump to commute his 150-year sentence.
The 81-year-old Madoff is serving out the lengthy sentence at a federal prison in North Carolina after being sentenced in 2009 for his $65 billion fraud.
Madoff is not asking that Trump pardon him but rather asking him to commute his sentence, according to information available on the Justice Department website. A search on the website shows that Madoff’s request is listed as “pending.” Although it doesn’t say when the petition was filed, an application typically takes about one to three months to appear on the clemency part of the website.
Following Madoff’s much-publicized arrest, conviction, and sentencing, his family languished from the repressions of his misdeeds.
In 2010, Madoff’s eldest son, Mark Madoff, hanged himself at the age of 46 in his Manhattan apartment on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest. Then, in 2014, the elder Madoff’s only other son, Andrew Madoff, died at 48 of mantle cell lymphoma, a condition he blamed on his father’s misdeeds.
“Even on my deathbed, I will never forgive him for what he did,” Andrew Madoff said a year before his death.
A commutation for Madoff is unlikely, as Justice Department statistics show that it received 1,003 petitions for pardons and more than 5,500 petitions from people looking to have their sentence commuted since Trump took office. Trump has granted 10 pardons and four commutations during that time.
The White House did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
