Bernie Madoff
After pleading guilty last March to 11 counts of fraud related to his $65 billion, long-running Ponzi scheme, Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison. Under federal court rules, he must serve at least 80% of his sentence, or 120 years, before being eligible for parole. The 71-year-old better get comfortable at his medium-security home — the Butner Federal Correctional Complex, outside of Raleigh, N.C. Currently his release date, on the prison's website, is listed as Nov. 14, 2139.
Inmate No. 61727-054 purportedly spends about eight hours a day working in Butner's engraving section, making nameplates for desks and doors. He sleeps on the lower bunk of the cell he shares with a drug offender and gets three hours of free time in the evenings. Apparently some of that recess includes debating other inmates. In October, it was reported that Madoff got into a heated discussion about the state of the stock market with another jailbird that escalated into a shoving match before the other man backed off. One inmate who witnessed the fight told the New York Post, "[Bernie] got the best of him."