Madoff lawyers try to spring him out of jail

Mar 13, 2009, 22:24 GMT

New York - A day after disgraced financier Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty to masterminding a 50-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme, his lawyers Friday requested that the court release him from jail until his sentencing June 16.

Madoff, 70, was led off in handcuffs to jail Thursday after his plea before the lower Manhattan federal court to all 11 criminal counts. He could be sentenced to 150 years in jail for one of the largest financial swindles in history.

As part of the request to release Madoff, lawyers submitted documents that indicated Madoff's net worth was 823 to 826 million dollars.

Madoff bilked thousands of investors around the world, including individuals and charity groups, of their money - many of their entire life savings. At least one investor and an investment manager have committed suicide since December over the revelations.

In the scheme, Madoff offered his investors handsome returns by continually collecting fresh funds from new clients instead of investing the money in securities, as he had promised. His office produced false financial statements for more than a decade which were mailed to clients.

Madoff has become the poster child of Wall Street greed in the current financial crisis.

The 70-year-old investor had been under house arrest since January at his luxurious Upper East Side Manhattan home on 10 million dollars bail - a court decision that provoked outrage among his many victims.

'I don't want to hear anything he has to say. He's meaningless, meaningless to me,' victim Rocco Ambrosino told local television station NY1 outside the courthouse on Thursday.

The scandal has been a major embarrassment for government regulators. An independent fraud investigator, Harry Markopolos, testified before Congress last month that he had warned the SEC of Madoff's shady operations some nine years ago.

Aside from Madoff's sentencing, the question remains whether the victims will be able to get any of their money back. Madoff's wife, Ruth, is arguing that tens of millions of dollars in her name cannot be touched to pay victims of the swindle.

Prosecutors also believe a number of Madoff's employees may have been involved in the scam and an investigation is ongoing, though no- one else has been charged to date. Madoff passed up the opportunity of a plea detail in exchange for implicating other employees in the scandal.