Bernie Madoff Asks Trump to Reduce His 150-Year Prison Sentence

Bernard Madoff asked President Donald Trump to shorten his 150-year sentence, effectively asking to be released from prison after running the biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S history.

Madoff, 81, filed the request with the Department of Justice, whose website lists no filing date. He is asking for a reduced sentence rather than a pardon.

Investors lost about $20 billion in principal to the fraud. Irving Picard, the trustee appointed to handle the dissolution of Madoff’s investment firm, has recovered more than $13 billion for them.

“It is hard to imagine a less sympathetic nonviolent offender than Bernard Madoff,” Matthew Schwartz, who helped prosecute Madoff 10 years ago, said in an email. “His tens of thousands of victims still continue to feel the profound and devastating harm from his decades-long fraud to this day. The president can surely find more deserving recipients of his commutation power.”

Randall Jackson, another former federal prosecutor now in private pracrtice who worked on the Madoff case, had a more succinct appraisal of the clemency request.

“That’s hilarious,” he said. “I’m actually speechless.”

Madoff, who is doing his time at a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina, pleaded guilty just months after he was arrested in late 2008. But he later laid some of the blame on his earliest and richest investors, saying he was a legitimate securities broker forced into a life of crime partly to meet their demands for high returns.

“I started my business with literally $500,” Madoff said. “By ’87, I was a rich guy.”

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