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A new white-collar benchmark: the main reason the number 150 matters in Madoff

By Douglas A. Berman

As many people recognized in anticipation of Bernie Madoff's sentencing, any prison term of 20 years or more was a functional life sentence for the 71-year-old super Ponzi schemer.  And, notably, the presentence report for Madoff apparently recommended a term of 50 years, perhaps to give him a kind of break due to his decision to plead guilty and also because this was double the 25 years given to Bernie Ebbers for what was previously thought to be the biggest corporate fraud sentenced in New York federal courts.But the government argued for a maximum permissible statutory sentencing term of 150 years in prison, and Judge Denny Chin apparently decided that only this term was "sufficient, but not greater than necessary" to achieve the purposes of punishment than Congress set out in 3553(a)(2)...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on June 29, 2009 (boomark / email).