‘Too risky’ for Madoff to attend son’s funeral

The crooked financier Bernie Madoff, serving a 150-year prison sentence for fraud, might not be given permission to attend the funeral of his son, Mark Madoff, who has committed suicide, because it would be unsafe.

Mark, 46, was found dead in his apartment in Manhattan's SoHo district on Saturday morning. He had hanged himself from a water pipe, using a dog leash. It was the second anniversary of his father's arrest.

Prisoners in the US are often given a supervised pass - or furlough - to attend family funerals. But the rules at the medium-security Butner correctional facility in North Carolina state that such furloughs are limited to prisoners with less than two years to serve.

Not only does 72-year-old Madoff have a theoretical 148 years to serve, but the number of people he defrauded means he has a lot of enemies out there.

"He could be a target. He could be shot," Ed Bales, managing director of Federal Prisons Consultants, told Fox News. "I would question whether they'd grant him a furlough because of heightened publicity."

It was Mark Madoff and his brother Andrew who informed the authorities two years ago that their father had confessed to running an illegal Ponzi scheme. The next day, December 11, 2008, Bernie Madoff was arrested and the extent of his fraud quickly became apparent.

Altogether, his victims were swindled out of about $65bn. When he came to be sentenced in June 2009, the judge threw the book at him.

The two brothers had worked on a trading desk at their father's firm, but have always maintained that they knew nothing about the Ponzi scheme.

However, they have remained under investigation and both were sued by Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee charged with representing Madoff's many victims. Picard accused Mark Madoff of using $66 million he received from the ill-gotten family fortune to buy luxury homes in New York City, Nantucket and Connecticut.

Earlier this year, Mark's wife, Stephanie Madoff, asked a court to change her last name and that of their young son Nick, because of the threats they had received.

Neither Mark nor his brother Andrew had spoken to their father or their mother Ruth since the scandal emerged. Ruth Madoff was said by a family lawyer to be "heartbroken" to learn of her estranged son's suicide.

"It's a terrible and unnecessary tragedy," said Mark Madoff's own lawyer.

"Mark was an innocent victim of his father's monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo." ·