Fraudster Madoff’s request for soft-touch prison rejected

Wall Street’s biggest fraudster Bernard Madoff will serve his jail term along with an Israeli spy and an Islamic terrorist at a North Carolina prison, where he was transferred on Monday after the US Bureau of Prisons rejected his request to spend the rest of his life at the Otisville Correctional Institute, an easygoing prison.

Now Prisoner No 61727-054, Madoff, 71, is serving his 150-year sentence for running a 65 billion dollar ponzi scheme at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex, 480 miles from New York, where Madoff’s wife and two sons.
 
Madoff’s sons have cut off all contact with their father since he admitted to running Wall Street’s biggest fraud, but a Madoff adviser says that the estrangement is “lawyer enforced” because of the continuing investigation, Times Online reports.

Madoff hopes that his sons will eventually visit him.

The Butner complex comprises of two mediumsecurity prisons and a low-security facility in the same place, which could make it easier for Madoff to transfer to a lower security jail in the future.

Among the inmates at the complex is Jonathan Pollard, the former US navy officer convicted of spying for Israel in 1987, who is scheduled to be released in 2015. Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind Egyptian sheikh jailed for life in 1995 for plotting a “day of terror” in New York.

Butner does house other white-collar criminals, such as John Rigas, the founder of Adelphia Communications, and his son, Tim, the company’s chief financial officer, who were convicted of fraud. Franklin Brown, the former vice-chairman of Rite Aid Corp, is serving a ten-year sentence at Butner. 
 
Butner was named one of America’s ten cushiest prisons by Forbes magazine.

The magazine noted, however, that it is “no Club Fed”. Federal prisons, sometimes dubbed Club Fed because of their easygoing rules and lack of a fence, are only for inmates serving less than ten years.

Madoff is likely to be held in solitary confinement, at least at the beginning of his sentence, as there is a risk of revenge attacks against him.