Bernie Goes to Jail: It’s About Bloody Time!

When I’ve seen family men lose their jobs and all of their savings when they are unable to bail themselves out of jail while they await trial for a charge of selling $40 worth of cocaine, because a judge refuses to bring their bail amount down to a reachable level, it is just a tad vexing to hear Bernie Madoff’s attorney argue—as he did this morning— that his client should remain out on bond because, after all, Bernie’s wife paid for the security at Madoff’s $7 million penthouse. (The penthouse and nearly 3/4 of a billion $ are conveniently being held in his wife’s name. Handy, that.)

(That would be the same wife who, in a case of remarkable prescience, withdrew $17 million from one of her accounts just days before her husband’s arrest.)

Thankfully, this time, the judge didn’t listen.

After arguments began on whether Madoff should remain free on bail, his lawyer Ira Sorkin described the bail conditions and how Madoff had, “at his wife’s own expense,” paid for private security at his penthouse.

Loud laughter erupted among some of the more than 100 spectators crammed into the large courtroom on the 24th floor of the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan. The judge warned the spectators to remain silent.

George Nierenberg, the first of the three investors to speak, approached the podium glaring at Madoff, then said in the financier’s direction: “I don’t know if you had a chance to turn around and look at the victims.

By the way, since it appears that Madoff will do some serious prison time, I would hope that no judge is foolish enough to send the man to any kind of Club Fed, as they used to call the Elgin Federal Prison Camp in Florida. (You can see Forbe’s Magazine’s recommendations as to the “Best Prisons,” for the well-heeled criminal.) Sing-Sing prison is nearby in Ossining, New York, and would do nicely.

UPDATE: Commenter Randy Paul points out that Sing-Sing is a State prison, but that Bernie will be perp-walked to a Federal facility. Quite right. Okay, then I nominate USP Florence ADMAX in Colorado. While it’s name isn’t as historic and colorful as Sing-Sing or Folsom, it would be just the ticket.

Here’s a profile of the place, and some of its higher profile inmates.

(Geeze. I’m getting vengeful these days. But I get too many collect calls from too many guys serving years in Level 4 prisons for nonviolent offenses that didn’t cause one-10,000th of the harm this guy caused.)