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Madoff Tells Fellow Inmates: "F--- My Victims"
By
Jen Chung
Published Jun 6, 2010
Modified Jun 6, 2010
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By
Jen Chung
Published Jun 6, 2010
Modified Jun 6, 2010
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Bernard Madoff, the world's biggest Ponzi schemer, whose $60+ billion fraud landed him a 150 year sentence, is keeping it really classy in federal prison. At least, that's according to New York magazine which reports that he told inmates at Butner Correctional, "Fuck my victims. I carried them for twenty years, and now I’m doing 150 years." Well, Madoff is half right—he carried the first batch of his investors with the money from the second!
The feature paints a picture of the once high-living "investor"'s life behind bars. One inmate serving a life sentence calls him a "hero. He's arguably the greatest con of all time." Madoff has "groupies" and he walks "around prison confident... like he beat the world," though sometimes he does get into fights. An ex-drug trafficker Madoff told him that “He could spin the globe and stop it anywhere with his finger, and chances are he had a house there or he’d been there. I was pretty blown away."
Others complain that he's messy, "didn’t know how to take a shower," and that he's not "prison material.” He hired another inmate to do his laundry for $8/month, suggested he be the clerk in charge of the prison budget (a supervisor said "Hell, no" and he got a job in the cafeteria), and lives in Camp Fluffy, where "soft prisoners" like pedophiles (who make his pizza) and cooperators are housed. Madoff is friendly with gay inmates and has "been kind enough to advise a [preoperative transsexual] on how to raise money for her sex-change operation." He also misses wife Ruth, whose attractiveness prompts other inmates to joke, "I’m getting out, and I’ll keep her company."
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Bernard Madoff
Butner
ponzi scheme
prison
victims
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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