Madoff Sentenced to 150 Years

Earlier today, self-admitted Ponzi schemer Bernard L. Madoff was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Denny Chin to a 150-year sentence, the maximum for the charges he was convicted on. As reported in TheDeal.com's Madoff Gets the Max, by Donna Block:

"Ira Sorkin, Madoff's defense attorney, argued for a 12-year sentence, but Madoff's victims urged Chin to impose the stiffest of penalties. Chin pushed aside assertions of remorse and rejected the suggestion from Madoff's lawyers that there was a sense of 'mob vengeance' surrounding calls for a long prison term. 'Objectively speaking, the fraud here was staggering,' the judge said. 'It spanned more than 20 years.'"

Block added, "After the sentencing, victims interviewed on CNBC asked the district attorney of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to continue a much more thorough investigation of the feeder funds and others who worked with Madoff."

TheDeal.com noted that AmericanLawyer.com was live blogging the proceedings. Read more highlights from these and other reports on the Madoff sentencing here.