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Quick answers
What did Bernard Madoff plead guilty to?
On 12 March 2009 he pleaded guilty in the Southern District of New York to eleven felony counts, among them securities fraud, investment-adviser fraud, mail and wire fraud, money laundering, false statements, perjury, false SEC filings, and theft from an employee benefit plan.
How long was the prison sentence?
Judge Denny Chin imposed 150 years on 29 June 2009, the statutory maximum on the counts as grouped. Madoff died in federal custody on 14 April 2021 at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina.
How much money was involved?
Customer statements at collapse implied about $65 billion including fictitious gains. Court and trustee materials later put net principal lost near $17–20 billion. Forfeiture paperwork used a much larger paper figure; SIPA recoveries are tracked against allowed principal claims.
Did the SEC examine the firm before 2008?
Yes. The 2009 inspector-general report documents multiple tips and examinations, including submissions associated with Harry Markopolos, that did not result in stopping the advisory fraud. The report is a public critique of those reviews.
What is the Picard trusteeship?
After the firm entered SIPA liquidation, the Bankruptcy Court appointed Irving H. Picard as trustee to marshal assets and distribute them to allowed customers. His reports and adversary complaints are the main civil record of who received what and when.
Were other people convicted?
Yes. Among them, Frank DiPascali, who had overseen much of the advisory paperwork, pleaded guilty in 2009. Peter Madoff, the defendant’s brother and former chief compliance officer, pleaded guilty in 2012 and received a ten-year sentence. Other employees and outside counterparties faced criminal or civil cases.
The public story of Bernard L. Madoff is not a whodunit. It is the documented end of an advisory practice that had issued reassuring statements for decades and could not meet redemptions when the 2008 crash arrived.
What follows is the sequence courts and the SIPA trustee treated as established: the confession to family, the arrest, the plea, the sentence, and the long civil effort to put principal back in allowed accounts.
Beats
- A market-maker with a private book
Madoff’s firm was known for market-making. A quieter advisory practice, marketed through word of mouth and feeder funds, issued statements that later proved disconnected from actual trading for those customers.
- Redemptions in a crashing market
In late 2008, withdrawal requests rose faster than cash. Madoff told his sons the advisory business was a fraud. Counsel for the family contacted federal authorities.
- Arrest and receivership
The FBI arrested Madoff on 11 December 2008. The SEC obtained emergency relief. A SIPA trustee took control of the brokerage estate for the benefit of customers.
- Guilty plea in Manhattan
On 12 March 2009 Madoff admitted the eleven counts in open court. He did not try the case to a jury. The allocution became the factual baseline for sentencing and for later civil complaints.
- A 150-year sentence and a long recovery
Judge Chin imposed 150 years on 29 June 2009. Picard’s liquidation then spent years suing recipients of transfers. Distributions to allowed claimants continued long after the criminal case ended.
The story on the public record is a completed criminal case plus an unfinished ledger of recoveries — not an open question of whether the advisory statements were real.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.