World-Class Fraudster Bernard Madoff Spends Lifetime Sentence at Nation's Cushiest Prisons

Jailed conman Bernard Madoff was “in transit” to the prison where he will begin serving his 150-year sentence, a Bureau of Prisons spokesman said yesterday.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons is transferring Madoff from a high-security lockup in lower Manhattan, where he’s been since his March 12 guilty plea, to a prison that hasn’t yet been publicly identified, agency spokesman Bill Gau said in an interview. He will serve his sentence in Butner, North Carolina, CNBC reported, citing an unidentified source.

“He’s in transit now,” said Gau, a spokesman at the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York. He declined to say where Madoff was being taken, Bloomberg reports.

Meanwhile, convicted swindler Bernard Madoff was transferred Monday to a federal prison in Butner, N.C., where he will serve his 150-year sentence.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons sent the 71-year-old Mr. Madoff to the Butner Federal Correctional Complex, about 30 miles north of Raleigh, and an eight-hour drive from New York City.

It isn't where Mr. Madoff's lawyer, Ira Sorkin, had asked that his client be housed. He had requested the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, N.Y. U.S. District Judge Denny Chin, who handled Mr. Madoff's criminal case in Manhattan, indicated he would recommend that the Ponzi-scheme operator serve his time in the Northeast.

Butner includes two medium-security prisons, a low-security prison, medical facility and satellite prison camp for minimum-security male inmates. Wall Street Journal reports.

Also, it's looking like a lifetime sentence at one of the nation's cushiest prisons for world-class fraudster Bernard Madoff. The record-setting scammer is reportedly on his way to the Federal Correctional Complex at Butner, N.C. It's no Club Fed--the U.S. Bureau of Prisons' minimum-security camps, which are the easiest places to do federal time, are only for offenders with 10 years or less on their sentences.

But Madoff shouldn't be too despondent. Neither should Marc Dreier, the swindling super lawyer expected to be sentenced as early as today. Prison camps have always been white-collar convicts' destination of choice, but even fraudsters with long sentences can find ways to make doing time easier--and to avoid sharing a cell with an ax murderer, Forbes reports.