Made off with Nothing
The question comes up all the time nowadays – why give Bernie Madoff 150 years in prison when his life expectancy is only about 13 years? Stay tuned. The answer will become evident over the next several months.
By handing out that sentence, prosecutors are proclaiming that they will be as ruthless as possible in trying to wrap up this case. They want the money back.
The court-appointed trustee of the defunct Madoff firm has recovered just $1.2 billion of the $13.2 billion in estimated net losses suffered by investors. And while they may get up to $500,000 from the Securities Investor Protection Corp., set up to compensate investors for theft, the rest of their money depends on finding those other assets. All the managers of so-called feeder funds, investment advisors, traders and relatives who worked on this scheme will be squeezed for information. Prosecution believe someone knows something and will talk if facing their own severe sentence. Madoff himself might have talked if he knew whet kind of sentence he could face. Now he knows. And so does everyone else.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:38 pm
I suspect that there’s also an attempt to satisfy the bloodlust by giving him the “maximum sentence,” and ties into his parole cycle.
Or, if you’re far more cynical and believe the various Ken Lay rumors, perhaps it’s so we don’t think about him again and he can “die” and relocate out of the country without anybody caring, right?