Madoff won’t appeal against 150-year sentence

Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff will not appeal against his 150-year jail sentence for fraud.

The fraud emerged last December when former Nasdaq chief Madoff confessed to his sons that nearly $65bn (€46m) he promised investors was safe was actually only worth a few hundred million.

“We won’t be appealing the sentence,” Madoff’s lawyer, Ira Sorkin, said tonight. He declined to say why the decision was made.

Rebekah Carmichael, a prosecutor’s spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Madoff, aged 71, was sentenced last week after admitting fleecing thousands of investors out of billions of dollars – an epic scheme that spanned the globe, according to a report released today by a court-appointed trustee.

The report by Irving Picard – responsible for identifying Madoff assets that could be used to compensate victims – said the search “has unearthed a labyrinth of interrelated international funds, institutions and entities of almost unparalleled complexity and breadth”.

The report said the trustee had located assets and businesses “of interest” in 11 places: Britain, Ireland, France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Spain, Gibraltar, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas. It also said he had sent more than 230 subpoenas seeking overseas records.

More than 15,400 claims against Madoff were filed by a July 2 deadline, the trustee said. He noted there were multiple claims from several accounts.

At his sentencing, Madoff apologised to the victims, describing his fraud as a “problem”, “an error of judgment” and “a tragic mistake”.

He said he and his wife Ruth were tormented, saying she “cries herself to sleep every night, knowing all the pain and suffering I have caused”.

Last Friday, Ruth Madoff was forced out of the £4.4m (€3.3m) Manhattan penthouse where the couple primarily lived, although they also had homes in the Hamptons (Long Island), Florida and France. Those homes and several yachts, together worth tens of millions of dollars, are being sold to reimburse investors.

Despite the efforts to liquidate his estate, it was expected that investors will receive only a small portion of the more than £8.1bn (€5.7m) they originally invested.

Anthony Sabino, a lawyer specialising in white-collar criminal defence, said the decision not to appeal against the sentence was no surprise.

“This is his acknowledgement that he really has no chance,” he said.

Mr Sabino said that by not appealing, Madoff was showing he “is now going to keep his mouth shut, take his punishment, and he’s willing to die in prison. To some extent, he acknowledges that this is the price he has to pay in order to protect others. Who are the others? We don’t know.”

The size of Madoff’s fraud, Mr Sabino said, had brought fresh meaning to the term Ponzi scheme, named after Charles Ponzi, who was convicted of mail fraud and conning thousands of people out of €10m in 1919-20.

“Charles Ponzi is now a footnote. They’re now Madoff schemes,” Mr Sabino said.