Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff left his jail cell and was taken under guard to court on Monday to hear his punishment for running Wall Street's biggest and most brazen investment fraud.
A U.S. judge is expected to sentence Madoff, 71, to an effective life term in prison during a court hearing in which some of his defrauded investors will describe the shock of losing their life savings.
Dozens of people started lining up outside the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan three hours before the scheduled start of the 10 a.m. (1400 GMT) proceeding in a ceremonial courtroom that seats 250 people.
"I don't care what they do with him. I don't care if they turn him loose. Just get us back our money," said Emma Devita, 81, who saved for 20 years with Madoff and says she is now broke.
"But I want him to be as poor as we are," she said outside the courthouse.
The confessed swindler, who pleaded guilty to a slew of crimes in the same court in March, will "speak to the shame he has felt and to the pain he has caused," said his lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin. In a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin on Sunday, Sorkin argued for a sentence less than the life term requested by U.S. prosecutors.
He disputed the size of the loss to investors, saying it "does not appear to rise to the historic proportions that the government has maintained." But Sorkin added that he did not "seek to minimize the magnitude of the crimes to which Mr Madoff pled guilty."
Madoff confessed to running a multibillion-dollar "Ponzi scheme" in which investors were paid returns from money paid by later investors.
Investigators do not know how much was stolen, according to court papers. Prosecutors say $170 billion flowed through the principal Madoff account over decades, and that weeks before the financier's December arrest the firm's statements showed a total of $65 billion in accounts.
The trustee winding down the Madoff firm has so far collected $1.2 billion to return to investors.
"Given the enormous amount of funds he has stolen and the number of victims, the sentence is going to be very, very high," said Paul Radvany, a law professor at Fordham University in New York and a former federal prosecutor.
FAMILY WILL NOT ATTEND
Madoff's wife Ruth and other family members are not expected to be in court for the sentencing. They have not attended any of Madoff's court appearances since his arrest.
Madoff's brother, Peter, and his sons, Mark and Andrew, held executive positions in the brokerage unit of Madoff's firm. Their lawyers say they were not aware of or involved in the crooked asset management side.
The judge has allowed Madoff, a former nonexecutive chairman of the Nasdaq stock market, to wear his own clothes at the sentencing hearing, instead of the loose-fitting uniform issued by the jail where he has been held since March 12. He wore a dark business suit.
Madoff has said all along that he committed the fraud on his own. He has not named any accomplices. The only other person charged is his outside accountant.
Michael Shapiro, a lawyer at law firm Carter Ledyard and Milburn LLP, said he expects a prison sentence of 30 years, based on previous sentences for large frauds in the same court.
He cited the case of former WorldCom Chief Executive Bernard Ebbers, who is serving 25 years for accounting fraud in a low-security prison. WorldCom said the fraud amounted to $11 billion.
"The individual damage that Madoff caused is probably much greater," Shapiro said. "Thirty years is effectively a life sentence and also takes into account he didn't kill anybody."
Madoff will serve his time in a low- or medium-security prison, depending on the length of his incarceration.
The case is USA v Madoff 09-213 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan)
