Bernie Madoff accepted 150-year prison rap to avoid mob hit

Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff accepted 150-year prison rap to avoid mob hit because he had managed ‘a significant chunk’ of their cash, new Netflix documentary claims: His guilty plea for stealing $20billion was ‘selfish act to stay alive’

• Bernie Madoff plead guilty to his multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme to avoid being killed by mobsters , according to a new documentary
• The upcoming Netflix documentary, ‘Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street,’ suggests Madoff had been managing and stole Russian mobsters’ money
• Madoff plead guilty to his crimes in 2009 instead of going to trial or seeking a plea deal, and the documentary suggests he did this to protect his own life
• The documentary, made by documentarian Joe Berlinger, is out on Wednesday

Bernie Madoff plead guilty to his multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme and took a 150-year prison sentence to avoid being whacked by the mob, according to a new Netflix documentary.

Madoff, who stole nearly $20billion from investors, managed ‘a significant chunk’ of cash belonging to international crime organizations before being exposed as a fraud after the 2008 financial crash.

In the upcoming Netflix documentary, ‘Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street,’ documentarian Joe Berlinger suggests Madoff went so willingly to prison to avoid being executed by the mob for stealing their money. The guilty plea was a ‘selfish act to stay alive,’ according to The New York Post.

The four-part documentary about Madoff, who died in 2012 at 82, will be released Wednesday.

Bernie Madoff plead guilty to his crimes to avoid being executed by the mob, a new documentary claimed

The upcoming Netflix documentary, ‘Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street,’ made by documentarian Joe Berlinger, is out Wednesday

Bernie Madoff leaving the US District Court in Manhattan in 2009 after pleading guilty to his Ponzi scheme

In 2009 Madoff plead guilty to his crimes instead of going to trial or seeking a plea deal. 

Though at the time of his plea Madoff spoke of the people he hurt during his scheme, Berlinger said Madoff felt no guilt whatsoever, and only plead guilty as an act of self-preservation. 

‘People feel like one of the reasons he was so willing to immediately acknowledge his guilt, say it was all him, and go to jail wasn’t an act of courage,’ Berlinger told The Post. 

‘Instead of trying to obfuscate or find a legal way out or to delay [ a verdict], I do think part of that was self-protection to avoid a mob hit.’

The new Netflix documentary includes footage of depositions Bernie Madoff gave in prison

During depositions given in prison, Madoff said prosecutors tried to get him to strike a plea deal instead of pleading guilty

Madoff said prosecutors tried to get him to tell them who else was involved in his scheme before his plead guilty

Among Madoff’s victims were Russian oligarchs, and rumors have long circulated that Russian crime organizations were also investors in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC.

While in prison he even befriended the boss of the New York City Colombo crime family boss, Carmine John Perisco Jr., who was serving time in the same facility.

The documentary included depositions Madoff gave while in prison, in which he revealed the prosecution was trying to bargain a plea deal with him before he plead guilty.

‘The prosecutor wanted me to plea bargain with them to make some sort of a deal by providing information as to who else was involved with this fraud,’ Madoff said in deposition footage in the documentary. ‘The belief was that I couldn’t be doing this all by myself, that there had to be other people involved.’

Bernie Madoff in 1999, nine years before his massive Ponzi scheme was exposed

Bernie Madoff with his wife Ruth. Madoff died in 2012 at 82 while serving a 150-year prison sentence

Bernie Madoff in March, 2009, after pleading guilty to carrying out the largest Ponzi scheme in history

Bernie Madoff’s 2008 mug shot

Madoff ran what appeared to a be a prolifically profitable investment group from one floor in a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper, while two floors below a team of his lackies fabricated financial documents to fool the clients and financial regulators alike into thinking they were making profits. 

‘The 17th floor [was] full of people plucked from high school for the most part – or people who would not have this kind of an opportunity to make this kind of money – who Bernie felt he could control and manipulate,’ Berlinger told The Post.

The documentary also zeroed in on one of those suspected accomplices, Madoff’s chief lieutenant Frank DiPascali, who began working with Madoff in 1975 and died in 2015 at 58 while awaiting sentencing. 

‘There was one simple fact that Bernie Madoff knew, that I knew, and that other people knew, but we never told the clients nor did we tell the regulators like the SEC,’ DiPascali said in a deposition. ‘No purchases or sales of securities were actually taking place in their accounts. It was all fake, it was all fictitious.’

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