Bernard L. Madoff is facing life in prison for beginning a Ponzi scheme 20 years ago that swindled billions of dollars of other people’s money, reports the New York Times.
Madoff’s lawyer said that Madoff’s guilty plea to all the criminal charges that federal prosecutors had filed against him could put him in prison for 150 years.
Madoff was arrested December 11 at his Manhattan home by federal agents who accused him of running what was perhaps the largest fraud in Wall Street’s history. The scheme was a global operation, drawing in foreign banks, hedge funds, charities, celebrities and ordinary retirees who had entrusted their savings to his investment firm, according to NYT.
The charges, made public late yesterday, offered a few fresh details about how Madoff conducted his long-running fraud. And they raised its price tag from his own estimate of $50 billion to nearly $65 billion, the total amount that thousands of customers were told they had in their accounts at his firm.
Questions remain unanswered regarding the involvement of family members and employees and the treatment of favored investors.
Prosecutors said that Madoff “caused more than $250 million” he collected through his Ponzi scheme from at least 2002 through 2008 “to be directed, through a series of wire transfers, to the operating accounts that funded the operations of these businesses.”
The government also charged that he had money transferred from his firm’s London office “to purchase property and services for the personal use and benefit” of himself, his family members and his associates.
Finally, prosecutors said that Madoff—whose investors prized his steady single-digit annual returns—actually had promised select clients extraordinarily high returns, as much as 46 percent, to lure them in.
In all, Madoff was charged with 11 felony counts, including securities fraud, money laundering and perjury. Under federal sentencing guidelines, those crimes would yield a life sentence for the 70-year-old trader.