A US appeals court on Friday denied bail to Wall Street fraudster Bernard Madoff, as prosecutors highlighted public outrage in a slew of e-mails demanding retribution.
The three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision to jail Madoff prior to his June 16 sentencing, saying that the disgraced money manager might try to escape.
Madoff, 70, faces up to 150 years in prison for fraud, money laundering, perjury and theft. Friday’s ruling effectively means he may never spend a night outside a cell again.
For Madoff’s thousands of victims — unaware over at least two decades that he was stealing billions of dollars worth of their investment funds — a life sentence is barely enough.
E-mails sent to the judge who presided during Madoff’s guilty plea last week boil with anger at the once-respected money manager, as well as bewilderment at the slow pace of the probe into his giant fraud.
“You are a murderer ... You are a rapist ... You are a larcenist,” a victim wrote in one of approximately 100 e-mails released to the media by prosecutors.
“You must be void of any human emotion, which makes you truly evil,” another wrote.
Victims represented in the e-mails run the gamut of rich investors who lost millions in Madoff’s Ponzi scheme to those who invested much smaller amounts and now find themselves bankrupted.
One suggests to the court that Madoff be made to work in a supermarket, clean public toilets and “stand on corners and announce in 101 ways how he’s a creep.”
An e-mail writer who said his family had lost their entire savings likened the situation “to a domestic holocaust” and said “we are being tortured to live ... in a nightmare of fear and the unknown.”
Another theme of the e-mails was frustration that Madoff’s immediate family members, who were closely involved with his business dealings, have not been charged.
Madoff said he acted alone. Legal experts believe his scheme — in which he fooled clients into believing that he was investing their money on the stock market — would have required considerable help.
On Wednesday, prosecutors charged only their second suspect, the accountant who allegedly rubber-stamped Madoff’s fake financial statements.
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