New York (AFP)
Bernard Madoff, author of the worst financial scam in history and sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009, asked to be released because he said he was dying.
According to an appeal registered Wednesday with a federal judge of Manhattan by his lawyer, Mr. Madoff, 81 years old, requests to be released immediately, "by compassion", because of a fatal disease of the kidneys.
He is currently serving his sentence in a federal medical prison in North Carolina, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which displays a theoretical release date in 2139.
According to lawyer Brandon Sample, the Prisons Office itself estimated in September that Mr. Madoff, the source of a pyramid-type fraud estimated between $ 25 and $ 63 billion - depending on whether or not interests - had "less than 18 months to live".
In telephone interviews with the Washington Post, Madoff said he was confined to a wheelchair and was not eligible for a transplant because of his age.
"I am fatally ill," said the detainee. "There is no cure for this kind of disease. I have already served 11 years, and frankly, I suffered from it."
Mr. Madoff, born into a modest family in New York, had never invested a single penny of the amounts entrusted by his clients, drawing from the funds of new investors to compensate or reimburse the older ones.
Long a star of Wall Street, his house of cards collapsed in December 2008 when an increasing number of investors, distraught by the financial crisis, had asked to recover their due.
Bernie Madoff was sentenced in 2009 to 150 years in prison after pleading guilty to 11 charges, including for fraud and money laundering.
Two years after his arrest in December 2011, his eldest son Mark Madoff was found hanged in his apartment.
A year later, in December 2012, his brother Peter Madoff was sentenced to 10 years in prison for accounting fraud. He is expected to be released from his federal prison in Miami in August 2020.
© 2020 AFP