Bernie Madoff Dead at 82 in North Carolina Prison

The world's most famous Ponzi schemer has officially passed away.

Bernie Madoff, the former Wall Street financial advisor and beacon of seemingly-endless cash, has died in prison. The Federal Bureau of Prisons, the agency that oversaw Bernie Madoff's prison stay, reports that he passed away in custody at his federal prison facility in North Carolina. Sources confirm Madoff died of natural causes, and had not been infected with COVID-19.

Madoff had been serving a 150-year sentence at the federal prison in Butner, North Carolina after his conviction stemming from his 2009 and onward legal battles. As recently as this year Madoff had been complaining of health issues, though, with his lawyers calling those complaints, "Life-threatening ailments." It seems they were, indeed, life-threatening, and included what Madoff reported as "terminal kidney failure."

A judge denied Madoff's request to be released from jail early, even under the faily common compassionate release grounds that Madoff's attorneys were trying to invoke with their most recent filings.

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His roughly two-lifestimes sentence was imposed after being found guilty of bilking thousands of investors out of massive amounts of money through his long-running Ponzi scheme that involved most of his family members, although many claimed they had no idea. The scheme was exposed in 2008 after he'd lost billions of US dollars from investors he had managed to swindle over the decades leading up to the housing market crash. Madoff would take investor's cash through his securities firm, deposit it into a complex array of accounts, and pay off other investors with it. It's more easily thought of as pyramid-style.

Madoff eventurally pleaded guilty to eleven federal felony counts including securities fraud, wire fraud, and other dubious crimes. He was also required to forfeit billions of dollars in assets held by him and his immediate family members.

The Madoff Victims Fund was eventually established after his conviction, but only paid back a tiny fraction of what was owed to investors, a reported just-shy-of three billion number for tens of thousands of bilked investors. The story of Madoff's rise and fall was also depicted on dozens of TV shows, movies, and documentaries, with the 2017 Robert DeNiro TV biopic on HBO garnering the most fame.

Madoff was 82, and is survived by his wife, Ruth Madoff, a 79-year-old woman who now lives in a swanky Connecticut suburb. She's said to be living nicely, but at a far cry from her former billionaire habits. Her net worth is now reported at a more modest two million dollars. Bernie's older son, Mark Madoff, died in 2010 on the second anniversary of his father's confession. He hanged himself after telling friends and relatives he would never be free of the scandal his father created.

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