‘Fuck my victims’, says Madoff in jail outburst

Did Bernie Madoff, instigator of the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, show remorse when he turned up in jail to serve a 150-year term for swindling his victims of $65 billion? Apparently not, if his fellow inmates are to be believed.

"Fuck my victims," Madoff exploded on one occasion. "I carried them for 20 years, and now I’m doing 150 years."

That outburst came within a month of his arrival at the federal correctional complex in Butner, North Carolina last summer. He let rip in front of about 100 fellow prisoners after being badgered by an inmate about the victims of his scheme.

The story is told by a bank robber in a new report by New York magazine, which claims to have interviewed 24 current and former inmates about life inside Butner with prisoner number 61727-054.

“Everybody was trying to kiss his ass,” Shawn Evans, a former Butner prisoner, said. “It was like the president was visiting,” said a visitor to the jail on the day Madoff arrived last July.

As The First Post reported just before Christmas, Madoff has tried to maintain a low profile in jail, keeping busy with his cafeteria job and playing chess and checkers in his spare time.

But clearly he remains unrepentant. "People just kept throwing money at me,” he apparently told a prison consultant who advised him on how to endure prison life. "Some guy wanted to invest, and if I said no, the guy said, ‘What, I’m not good enough?’”

Meanwhile Shannon Hay, a drug dealer imprisoned in the same unit in Butner as Madoff, told New York said that Madoff, now 72, believed his victims got what they deserved. "He took money off of people who were rich and greedy and wanted more.”