Bernie Madoff is prison ‘don’, says fellow inmate

Five months into his jail sentence, the world's most notorious swindler Bernard L Madoff appears to be adjusting to prison life. A fellow inmate at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina said this week that the 71-year-old was regaining his respect, at least on the inside: "To every con artist, he is the godfather, the don."
 
Madoff, the former Wall Street fund manager, was sentenced to 150 years' jail on June 29 for defrauding his clients of almost $65 billion.
 
A picture of Madoff's prison life has emerged from interviews with current and former inmates at Butner, and various lawyers. Madoff sleeps in the bottom bunk of the unlocked cell he shares with a younger man named Frank, wears prison khakis and scrubs pots and pans in the prison kitchen for as little as 12 cents an hour. He spends his spare time playing bocce, chess and checkers and has been spotted walking on an outdoor track.
 
"All things considered, he's OK," Madoff's lawyer Ira Sorkin told the Wall Street Journal. "He still suffers deeply for what he did."
 
Another lawyer, Nancy Fineman, who represents Madoff's former clients in a suit against his wife Ruth Madoff, reports that the architect of the biggest Ponzi scheme in history has been fraternising with some equally notorious criminals.
 
Fineman, who visited Madoff in July, told the WSJ that the jailbird mentioned chatting with fellow inmates such as Carmine 'the Snake' Persico, the boss of the Colombo crime family who is serving life at Butler for murder and racketeering charges, and Jonathan Pollard, an American imprisoned after admitting to spying for Israel more than two decades ago.
 
Madoff's notoriety made him hugely popular when he first arrived at Butner, Fineman added. "People wanted his signature because they wanted to sell it on eBay, so he wouldn't sign anything.”
 
Other prisoners are convinced that inmate 61727-054 must have money hidden somewhere. As a result, correctional officers keep a close watch on Madoff and don't allow groups to crowd around him.
 
"He looks like the rest of us doing time," the inmate who asked not to be identified told the WSJ. "He just acts like a normal guy."
 
But it has not been all plain sailing for Madoff in prison. In October the New York Post reported that he had got into his first fight - a prison-yard shoving match with another "senior-citizen jailbird" over the stock market. ·