THE BERNIE Madoff
sentencing reminded me
of the old story about the repeat felon who came before a hanging judge for sentencing.
"I'm sentencing you to 100 years and one dark day," the judge tells him.
"I can't do that much time," the felon cries.
"I understand," the judge consoles him. "Just do as much as you can."
At a glance, it looks as if Judge Denny Chin did as much as he could in sentencing Madoff to 150 years in prison.
But did he? Did the prosecutors who accepted his guilty plea do all they could? Why didn't they force him to at least reveal how he and others pulled off the biggest fraud in U.S. history?
Instead, Madoff gets to come off as a stand-up guy while a lot of equally slimy crooks get to curl up under rocks that the feds failed to kick over.
By any reasonable accounting, Madoff is the biggest thief since our species first walked upright. The combined proceeds of all the thieves who preceded him don't add up to the $68.4 billion that he was estimated to have stolen, according to court documents.
The only question that Judge Chin had to ponder before deciding the sentence was, "How many years am I allowed to give this guy?"
The sentencing set off a smattering of applause from the victims assembled in Chin's Manhattan courtroom, many of whom had lost their life savings in Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme.
They had contemplated more medieval forms of punishment for Madoff, maybe something involving four horses running in different directions, each harnessed to one of Madoff's limbs. Considering the judge's limited options, though, 150 years may have seemed fair.
But I'm not so sure of that. It has been only a few months since Madoff came clean. Why was there such a rush to sentence him without at least trying to force him to identify his co-conspirators.
Madoff may have been the smartest kid in his class, but even he could not steal this much money by himself without the aid of a bandanna or pistol. They can start searching for accomplices at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
There were people yelling "Stop, thief!" for 10 years. But the SEC could find no fault in the man.
Is it possible for a regulatory agency to be that inept without also being complicit? Why not offer him a deal, say 50 years off, for identifying those SEC "probers" who couldn't look down and find their shoes.
Investors were lied to repeatedly in mailings sent from someone inside the Madoff organization who had to know better. Some Madoff operative knew that the new money coming in was not being invested but re-routed to cover claims by earlier investors.
Why not offer Madoff a few years off to identify the unindicted co-conspirators who carried out the e-scam that kept this thing going for decades?
When he pleaded guilty, Madoff claimed that the wholesale stock-trading firm run by his sons and brother had nothing to do with the fraud. His wife of 50 years, who once worked as a bookkeeper, was innocent too, to hear Madoff tell it.
At least two major feeder funds run by Madoff allies were named in SEC civil actions filed last week in New York. Between them, Ascot Partners and an L.A.-based investor named Stanley Chais funneled nearly $3 billion to Madoff.
"These Madoff solicitors collectively received several hundred million in fees over the past few decades while Madoff ruined the finances of countless investors," James Clarkson, director of the New York regional SEC office charged in the civil filing.
So Bernie Madoff gets 150 years or roughly 15 years for each $6.8 billion he swindled.
Meanwhile, guys like Corey Kemp, the former city treasurer who is doing 10 years for accepting a backyard deck and a lavish weekend at the Super Bowl, must be wondering why somebody didn't cut them a slice of that kind of justice. *
Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/smith
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