Bernard Madoff was sentenced 150-years for leading history's biggest Ponzi scheme. The time is six times more than that given to guilty executives of Enron Corp. and Worldcom Inc. frauds.

His facade shattered on Dec. 11, as Madoff confessed to authorities that his firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, was “one big lie.” Under immense pressure from a rush of investor redemptions, he admitted he used money from new investors to pay old ones. Regulators later said that his investment advisory business hadn’t made a trade in at least 13 years.

Some of his thousands of investors lost their life savings. Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet, chief executive officer of Access International Advisors, which managed $3 billion, was driven to suicide because of his firm’s Madoff-related losses, his brother, Bertrand Magon de la Villehuchet, said in January.

Madoff received the maximum sentence on the 11 fraud charges to which he pleaded guilty. Before his sentencing, he consulted with Herbert Hoelter of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, a prisoner advocacy group, according to court records.

At his guilty plea in March, Madoff said that in the early 1990s, with the U.S. in a recession, he felt “compelled” to provide the returns his investors expected and began stealing investor money. He said the proprietary trading and market- making units of his business, both run by his sons, were “legitimate,” and his U.K.-based affiliate, Madoff Securities International Ltd., was an “honestly run” business.

“I am actually grateful for this opportunity to publicly speak about my crimes, for which I am so deeply sorry and ashamed,” Madoff said in court at the time. “I knew what I was doing was wrong, indeed criminal.” Source: www.bloomberg.com

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150 years for a 71 years old probably does not make much sense but hopefully, this will never happen again!