Bernard L Madoff

With Bernard L. Madoff sentenced Monday to 150 years in prison, his massive Ponzi scheme is likely to be felt for years as victims struggle to recoup their money, investors treat Wall Street with new suspicion and regulators scramble to crack down on all manner of financial wrongdoing. Closing a chapter in the Madoff melodrama, a federal judge unexpectedly imposed the maximum possible sentence, jolting the legal community and electrifying many of those who had entrusted Madoff with their money.

Peter Moskowitz's retirement was marred forever when he lost his life savings to Bernard L. Madoff -- and he doesn't want the disgraced financier's golden years to be any better. Moskowitz and other victims of Madoff's monumental Ponzi scheme will be watching closely as Madoff is sentenced today for masterminding a scheme that swindled billions of dollars from investors over two decades. Madoff's lawyer, Ira Sorkin, has asked U.S.

Calabasas resident Richard Shapiro never made it to his college graduation. Instead, he went to work and spent decades in the commercial real estate industry. Overnight, he watched a lifetime of savings disappear in the wreckage of Bernard L. Madoff's Ponzi scheme. "It was sickening to see your life's work disappear in a second," said Shapiro, one of almost 5,000 investors who lost money to confessed swindler Madoff.

J. Ezra Merkin, a hedge fund manager who invested billions of dollars of his clients' money with Wall Street swindler Bernard L. Madoff, has agreed to relinquish control of his funds to court-appointed trustees.

The trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff's defunct money management firm told 223 investors to return as much as $735 million or face legal action, a person familiar with the matter said. "The trustee demands that you immediately return such amounts to the trustee for the benefit of all defrauded creditors" of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, according to a copy of the letter.

Authorities seized convicted financier Bernard L. Madoff's waterfront mansion and vintage yacht in an effort to recoup assets for investors he swindled. U.S. marshals changed the locks at the unoccupied property and inventoried the 8,753-square-foot home, listed on tax rolls as worth $9.3 million. Madoff's 55-foot yacht named "Bull," a 1969 Rybovich valued at $2.2 million, was seized from a marina on Florida's Atlantic coast. A motor boat also was seized.

Stanley Chais, a Beverly Hills money manager and philanthropist who steered hundreds of millions of dollars into investments overseen by Bernard L. Madoff, has fallen ill, relocated to New York and wants to move lawsuits against him from state court to federal court in Los Angeles. Investors have filed at least three lawsuits against Chais, accusing him of failing to properly safeguard their money and of not disclosing that he was investing with the disgraced New York swindler.

Prosecutors probing Bernard L. Madoff's massive fraud are determined to leave his wife with almost nothing after telling a Manhattan court that they consider more than $100 million in assets, most of it listed in her name, to be the fruits of her husband's crimes. The government even included a $39,000 Steinway piano and $65,000 in silverware, both owned by Ruth Madoff, in items it said it would try to force the Madoffs to forfeit. The list was in a three-page document filed in U.S.

Even with Bernard L. Madoff heading to prison Thursday after confessing to an epic Ponzi scheme, the intrigue over his case deepened as embittered victims pressed the government to find out who may have helped him and where the money went. At a 75-minute court hearing, he pleaded guilty to 11 securities-related fraud counts and said he was "so deeply sorry and ashamed."