'Evil' Madoff gets 150 years
Jul 03, 2009
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Six months after he admitted his business was "one big lie", Bernard Madoff was sentenced in New York on Monday to the maximum term of 150 years in prison. Deemed "extraordinarily evil" by the judge, the 71-year-old had paid returns to his initial investors with money from new ones in the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. So far, only $1.2bn of the $65bn pyramid scheme has been recovered.
What the commentators said…
"Everything about Madoff was too good to be true," said The Guardian, from the steady returns he apparently offered to the Dickensian aptness of his surname (Made-off). It's not surprising he has become the "public face of the Age of Irresponsibility".
His victims have had to sell their homes and take up minimum wage jobs in retirement, with others, such as Miriam Siegman, reduced to rooting for food in skips. "I sometimes scavenge in dumpsters," the retired New York consultant told the court. "He robbed me… he discarded me like roadkill."
"The victims will be left with a long, frustrating battle" to try and recover money, said John Gapper in the Financial Times. But they only have themselves to blame, said Joe Nocera on NYTimes.com. The positive returns, quarter on quarter, should have set off a warning light. Instead, they fell for the idea that they were members of an exclusive club; "there was a certain smugness that came with thinking they had a special, secret deal not available to everyone else".
Of course, they did have a special deal. "It just wasn't what they expected." There will be plenty more scandals like this one, said Richard Beales on Breakingviews. After all, "people will always be hopeful and greedy".
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