Disgraced Madoff could be barred from attending son’s funeral

BERNARD MADOFF could be barred from attending his son Mark’s funeral, according to rules at the North Carolina prison where he’s serving his 150-year sentence, the New York Post reported yesterday.

Mark was found dead in the living room of his downtown Manhattan apartment on Saturday morning, on the two-year anniversary of his father’s arrest, officials said.

According to the Inmate Handbook at the Butner Federal Correctional Institution where Madoff is incarcerated, supervised furloughs to attend funerals of “immediate family members” are available only to inmates with two years or less pending on their prison terms. “Furloughs are a privilege, not a right, and are only granted when clearly in the public interest,” the handbook says.

The eldest son of the disgraced financier hanged himself in his Manhattan apartment — the second anniversary of his father’s arrest in a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that swindled thousands of investors of their life savings.

The body of Mark Madoff, 46, was found as his two-year-old son slept in a nearby bedroom.

Madoff, who reported his father to authorities, has never been criminally charged in the biggest investment fraud in US history.

Mark and his brother Andrew have said they were unaware of their father’s crimes. But they have remained under investigation and been named in multiple investor lawsuits accusing them of profiting from the scheme.

Mark Madoff’s lawyer, Martin Flumenbaum, said in a written statement: “This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy. Mark was an innocent victim of his father’s monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo.”