Madoff pleads guilty, sent to jail
Published: 13 March, 2009, 11:18
TAGS: Investment, Crime, Scandal, Law, USA
Bernard Madoff has been handcuffed and led to jail after a judge revoked his bail upon his guilty plea to the 11 charges against him, including fraud and money laundering.
Saying he was “deeply sorry and ashamed,” the 70 year-old Madoff pleaded guilty Thursday to pulling off what has been called the largest swindle in Wall Street history by cheating investors out of some $US 50 billion.
After his admission of guilt, the judged revoked the former NASDAQ chairman's bail and he was immediately led off to jail in handcuffs and could face up to 150 years in prison.
“I am actually grateful for this opportunity to publicly comment about my crimes, for which I am deeply sorry and ashamed,” said Madoff.
Madoff told the judge that he began the scheme in the early 1990s when the country was in a recession and the market was not doing well.
“When I began the Ponzi scheme I believed it would end shortly and I would be able to extricate myself and my clients from the scheme,” he said. “However, this proved difficult and ultimately impossible, and as the years went by I realized that my arrest and this day would inevitably come.”
Madoff, who had been under house arrest in his Manhattan penthouse for the past three months, will be sentenced June 17.
Aside from jail time, Madoff faces fines, restitution to his victims and forfeiture of all his illegal gains.
While many victims welcomed the news, the plea let down many investors who had hoped for further disclosure into the extent of the fraud. Because of the nature of a guilty plea, Madoff is not obliged to disclose the names of those who helped him or say where the money went.
“I don't think he has a sincere bone in his body,” said DeWitt Baker, an investor who attended the hearing and lost more than $1 million with Madoff. He said that prison time would be too good for Madoff.
“I'd stone him to death,” he said.
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The economy of US is in fact run as Madoff scheme. New debt is taken to pay for the debt taken before. In absence of real wealth creation that results with the total debt rising year by year since 1980. In fact Madoff has can not accused of doing anything different to what the US treasury has been doing all the time.
The way in which this case is covered by western media is an insult. $50-65 billion dollar fraud and this is just Madoff the only one guilty. Rubbish, Madoff had family members and employees working for his investment firm. His son was a director there. All those people knew very well what they were doing. Their taxes were paid and it should be very easy to trace them all. The most insulting of all are the debates on whether Madoff will or will not cooperate. Perhaps waterboarding what apparently is not a torture would help. I am convinced that US authorities are protecting all the others fraudsters employed by Madoff. Above all the silence from Madoff investors is really surprising. Some of them are very large foreign banks. That must be because of the ‘special relations’ they have with the US.