Madoff Faces Harsher Imprisonment Than Corporate Predecessors

By David Glovin, Patricia Hurtado and Thom Weidlich

June 30 (Bloomberg) -- Bernard Madoff, sentenced to a prison term six times longer than those given the chief executives of WorldCom Inc. and Enron Corp., will likely serve his time in a harsher prison than those white-collar inmates.

Sentenced to 150 years, Madoff will probably be sent to a medium- or high-security prison, probably in the northeastern U.S, according to lawyers and prison consultants. Even worse for Madoff, fellow inmates serving life sentences may want “to make a name for themselves” by harming the ex-money manager, a former inmate said. The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which will decide where he’s jailed, may isolate Madoff to protect him from other prisoners.

“If they see an opportunity to take that man out and be in the paper and make a name for themselves, what do they have to lose,” Steve Vincent, a former police officer jailed for theft who now runs Federal Prison Consultant Services in Louisville, Kentucky, said in an interview. “Wherever he goes, they’re going to put him in solitary.”

The Bureau of Prisons hasn’t decided where Madoff will be jailed, said spokeswoman Felicia Ponce. Madoff’s 150-year term, the seriousness of his crimes and the judge’s recommendation that he be jailed in the northeast will be factors in the decision. Madoff asked to do his time in Otisville, New York, a medium-security lockup 70 miles northwest of Manhattan.

Madoff won’t wind up in the minimum-security camp that’s next to the tougher prison. Inmates serving more than 10 years aren’t eligible for the unfenced and un-walled camps, Ponce said.

‘Violent Offenses’

“The vast majority of people he’ll be incarcerated with will be people who committed violent offenses,” said Barry Pollack, a lawyer who represents white-collar defendants and isn’t involved in the Madoff case.

Madoff, 71, was sentenced yesterday for a decades-long fraud that cheated investors of billions of dollars. Prosecutors said Madoff’s investors lost at least $13 billion. Investors were told they had about $65 billion before the fraud came to light.

If sent to a medium- or high-security prison, Madoff will join other non-violent criminals who have wound up in the harshest of confines.

Former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Robert Hanssen, convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, is now at the so-called Supermax penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. Former Tyco International Ltd. Chief Executive Officer L. Dennis Kozlowski is doing 8 1/3 years at a medium-security state prison in New York.

“A ‘Camp Fed’ is out of the question,” said Alan Ellis, a Mill Valley, California-based attorney and co-author of “Federal Prison Guidebook.” “He’s never going to get to a federal prison camp like Martha Stewart.”

Locked Cells

Former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers and former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling are jailed at low-security facilities. Camps and low-security prisons provide dormitory or cubicle housing. Camps have no fencing around their perimeter. The tougher prisons that await Madoff are surrounded by electronic detection systems and house inmates in locked cells.

Ellis said he expected Madoff, who has spent the last three months in a Manhattan lockup, to be moved to a high-security penitentiary because of his notoriety and his lengthy term. Although he’d be with lifers who may want to harm him, he’d have more security, Ellis said. If threatened, Madoff would be moved to isolation by prison officials, he said.

High-Profile Inmate

“With any high-profile inmate, they have concerns that someone might do something to gain the notoriety of harming, hurting or killing” him, said Pollack, of Miller & Chevalier Chartered in Washington.

Kirby Behre, a sentencing expert at law firm Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP, was less convinced that Madoff would find himself walled off from other prisoners. Such “virtual solitary confinement” is “very onerous” for a prisoner and would likely result only if he requested it, Behre said.

“What he should expect is a relatively dank facility where he’s going to be integrated and treated no differently than other prisoners,” Behre said.

Inside prison, Madoff will begin a life of unending sameness. He’d wake at 6 a.m., be put to work until 3:30 p.m., have free time until 9 p.m., and go to bed at 11:30 p.m., Ponce said. His job will pay from 12 cents to 40 cents an hour, depending on his assignment and its seniority. He’ll be allotted 300 minutes of phone calls a month.

“There’s generally a walking track they can use, a basketball court,” Ponce said.

In isolation, Madoff would be in his cell 23 hours a day, and his hour outside would be spent alone, in a space that Vincent compared to “a dog pen.”

“He’s going to be a real headache for the Bureau of Prisons for the rest of his life,” Ellis said.

The case is U.S. v. Madoff, 09-cr-00213, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

To contact the reporters on this story: David Glovin in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan at dglovin@bloomberg.net; Thom Weidlich in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan at tweidlich@bloomberg.net; Patricia Hurtado in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan at phurtado@bloomberg.net.