Fraud Victims Want Maximum for Madoff

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Fraud Victims Want Maximum for Madoff
Michael Appleton for The New York Times
In March, Bernard L. Madoff arrived at federal court in Manhattan where he pleaded guilty to charges in connection with a $65 billion Ponzi scheme. His sentencing is scheduled for June 29.


They are widows, retired schoolteachers, electrical contractors and Korean War veterans. Most had a strong message for the judge in charge of sentencing Bernard L. Madoff: impose the maximum sentence allowable by law.

cs: Bernard L. MadoffIn more than 100 letters and e-mail messages to Judge Denny Chin, victims of Mr. Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme described how their lives had been forever changed by the actions of a man they had trusted.

The letters, sent to the Federal District Court in Manhattan and released to the public on Monday, come ahead of Mr. Madoff’s sentencing on June 29. Eight of the victims, including one who has known Mr. Madoff personally for more than 20 years, asked Judge Chin for permission to speak at the sentencing.

More than two-thirds of the victims who wrote to the court were retirees or children of retirees who invested with Mr. Madoff more than a decade ago. Many said they had been forced to move in with relatives or look for jobs.

Several letters expressed dismay with the Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to discover the fraud after being tipped off numerous times.

Many were brimming with anger directed at Mr. Madoff.

“Sentence this monster named Madoff to the most severe punishment within your abilities,” wrote Randy Baird, a California lawyer. “We are too old to make up what we lost. We have to start over.”

In March, Mr. Madoff, 71, pleaded guilty to 11 counts of fraud, money laundering, perjury and theft. The charges carry maximum terms totaling 150 years.

Some took issue with the portrayal of the fraud’s victims in the news media as being among the wealthy and privileged. “Many Madoff victims are elderly individuals or retirees who were saving for the future and they had the misfortune to believe in a powerful Wall Street insider who was repeatedly investigated and given a clean bill of health,” wrote Emma De Vito, 81, a widow from Chalfont, Pa., who lost her entire life savings to Mr. Madoff.

Separately on Monday, Representative Paul E. Kanjorski, an influential Pennsylvania Democrat, demanded that the S.E.C. provide Congress with an update on its internal investigation into why the agency failed to detect the Madoff scheme.

In a letter, Mr. Kanjorski, the chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises, asked the S.E.C.’s inspector general, H. David Kotz, to issue an update immediately on the Madoff investigation. The letter also asked him to offer recommendations for improving enforcement and closing legal loopholes that became apparent as a result of the $65 billion fraud.

Mr. Kotz responded Monday afternoon, saying he intended to issue three reports “very shortly” detailing all of the investigations that the S.E.C. conducted into Mr. Madoff and Madoff-related entities since 1992 and the reasons that the agency failed to uncover the scheme.

The first report is expected to be published by the end of August, Mr. Kotz said. The two other reports, which the inspector general is planning to issue by Sept. 30, will provide specific recommendations for improvement of the S.E.C.’s enforcement division and its Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations.

This month, Mr. Kotz provided a brief update on the progress of the investigation in his semiannual report to Congress. The report said investigators had reviewed more than 1.3 million e-mail messages, interviewed more than 27 S.E.C. employees involved in inspecting and examining the Madoff firm and hired a forensic accounting firm to review reports on the Madoff firm produced by the agency.

While the report provided some details of how investigators were proceeding, it did not disclose results of the investigation or offer recommendations on regulatory reform. Mr. Kotz said in the report that he hoped to complete the investigation