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: Bernard Madoff

Can You Complete A Sentence, Please?

To: The Honorable D.Chin
US Federal Court
Southern District

From: M. Madoff

RE: Sentencing

Dear Judge Chin:

On behalf of myself and brother, I know that you've been inundated with letters and videos from people that want to impress you with their misfortunes in the course of your determining a jail sentence on my Dad.

I can only guess that the majority of those letters are asking you to impose the harshest penalty, and one that would relegate my Dad to prison for the rest of his life.

If anybody hasn't already figured it out, my Dad created massive wealth for hundreds, if not thousands of people over a 30 year period.

Most of the people that have said their "entire savings were wiped out" lived pretty damn well on the money they withdrew. OK, some didn't draw any money out, but if Mr. Picard wants to stand on ceremony and impose punitive requirements on people, that's certainly not my problem to worry about.

The point is, when one thinks about the thousands of people that lost their life savings in AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman, General Motors, Ford, and God knows how many other companies, should my Dad be punished because people invested their entire savings with him--a private company?? Did he really do anything so differently?

Its not as if he invented up some wild "ponzi scheme" 30 years ago and planned all of this out. How do I know this? Well, for one, I hired Mr. Avellino's former housekeeper to clean our place in Nantucket, and she was chock full of insight. Yes, Mr. Avellino is the same fellow that operated Frank's & Beans--a firm that my Dad was associated with for decades.

I spend a lot of time in Nantucket, and have learned a lot from her. God forbid that any of the so-called investigators, or any of the wannabe Jimmy Olson's and Lois Lane's that are climbing through garbage pals looking for dirt would know which rocks to turn over.

Sure, you'll think that I'm being subjective when we say that a prison sentence of 5-10 years is overly harsh. And yes, my brother, my cousin, and all of the other members of our family have been completely dependent upon my Dad for financial support since we were all in diapers, and since well past the time when my brother stopped wetting his bed.

My Mom is different. She made her fortune from her cook book and from the money she inherited from her parents. $50 million might sound like a lot of money for writing a cook book and for the accrued gains on her inheritance, but, as many people are figuring out, lots of people made much more money for doing much less work.

And until her lawyer proves to you that those muni bonds she holds are her's free and clear, she's been stuck living off an allowance that's smaller than what my daughters get!

So, sending my Dad to jail for an extended period would leave all of us without the one person that could provide the money that our family needs to maintain our first homes, our vacation homes, our cars, our expense accounts, the tuition for private schools, and the variety of other expenses that we each have.

As you need to know, just like the people that wrote to you to say they've "had to sell their homes in order to have enough to live on without working," even when my brother legally changes his name and moves to Oregon, he has no real job skills, other than putting bait on a hook. So he's suffering just like everyone else!

Sure, he day-trades, and makes a few bucks--and just like my Dad told him, he's been short the market for the past week. But, that's a crap shoot business, and he'll blow out faster than the worn-out tires on Uncle Pete's Aston Martin.

Shana tried the leg waxing business. That was a burn-out. And now she and my Mom are talking about opening a franchise of vintage clothing stores. Let's face it, that's an idea that won't produce nearly enough to cover the types of lifestyles that we're all used to.

So your honor, while you consider the pro's and cons of a jail sentence, I impeach you to discount what the Pros is saying, and instead, consider what it'll be like for many of us if you make my Dad a life-long con.

Thanks for listening.

M. Madoff
The Older, Smater, and Better Looking Son

Full post as published by Bernard Madoff on June 16, 2009 (boomark / email).