## Facts

- Bernard L. Madoff ran Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (BLMIS) while secretly operating a decades-long Ponzi scheme.
- The scheme generated fabricated customer account statements and purported trades, allowing Madoff to solicit and retain investor funds while using new money to pay requested withdrawals.
- The conduct harmed thousands of victims, including individuals, charities, pension funds, and other institutional clients.
- Estimated losses were enormous; figures discussed in the case ranged from roughly $13 billion (used for certain sentencing calculations) to far higher amounts asserted by victims and reflected in customer statements.
- The United States filed an eleven-count criminal information charging securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, false statements, perjury, false filings with the SEC, and theft from an employee benefit plan.
- Madoff pleaded guilty to all eleven counts without a plea agreement.
- Before sentencing, victims submitted letters and emails describing the scheme’s effect on their lives and organizations, including decisions about retirement, medical care, charitable giving, and education that were made in reliance on the false account statements.
- At sentencing, Madoff argued for a substantially lower sentence based on asserted mitigating considerations, including that he confessed, accepted responsibility, and consented to a massive forfeiture order.
- The district court (S.D.N.Y., Judge Denny Chin) sentenced Madoff to an aggregate term of 150 years’ imprisonment and entered significant forfeiture; the court later addressed restitution and found it impracticable to order restitution in the criminal case given the number of victims and complexity of loss issues.

## Issues

1. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), what sentence was sufficient but not greater than necessary for an extraordinary, long-running financial fraud causing enormous losses and widespread victim harm, in light of Madoff’s claimed mitigating factors.
2. Where the Sentencing Guidelines called for life imprisonment but no single count carried a life maximum, whether the court could reach the Guidelines outcome by imposing consecutive statutory maximums across counts.
3. Whether restitution had to be ordered under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act, or whether restitution was excused because identifying all victims and calculating losses would be impracticable and would unduly prolong sentencing.

## Decision

- The court sentenced Madoff to a total term of 150 years’ imprisonment, reaching that result by imposing consecutive terms across counts to reflect the Guidelines life recommendation.
- The court imposed extensive criminal forfeiture, including a very large money judgment and forfeiture of specified assets tied to the offense conduct.
- In a later order in the same criminal case, the court found restitution impracticable due to the number of victims and the complexity of determining losses, and directed that victim recovery proceed through forfeiture remission rather than a case-by-case restitution order.

## Legal Principles

- Sentencing must reflect the factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), including the seriousness of the offense, just punishment, deterrence, and the need to avoid unwarranted disparities.
- A court may impose consecutive sentences on multiple counts to reach the total punishment contemplated by the Guidelines when the Guidelines call for life imprisonment but individual counts have statutory maximums short of life (often described as “stacking” under U.S.S.G. § 5G1.2).
- Victim impact information, including written submissions and in-court statements, may be considered at sentencing and may support a severe sentence where the record shows pervasive and lasting harm.
- Claimed mitigation such as confession or acceptance of responsibility may be given limited weight when the offense is extreme in scale, duration, and harm, and when the court finds that punishment and deterrence require the maximum available term.
- Criminal forfeiture may be ordered as part of the sentence to recover proceeds traceable to fraud and related offenses.
- Restitution under the MVRA may be deemed impracticable where the number of identifiable victims is so large, or loss determinations are so complex, that the burden on the sentencing process outweighs the benefit of a restitution order in the criminal case (with recovery instead pursued through forfeiture-related processes).

## Conclusion

In United States v. Madoff, the district court sentenced Bernard Madoff to an aggregate 150-year prison term after his guilty plea to eleven felony counts arising from a decades-long Ponzi scheme that devastated thousands of victims, imposed sweeping forfeiture to capture criminal proceeds, and later declined to enter a restitution order because administering restitution in the criminal case was impracticable given the number of victims and the complexity of determining losses.


United States v. Madoff, 1:09-cr-00213 (2009)