Peter Madoff in 2002.
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The younger brother of the infamous financier and Ponzi swindler Bernard Madoff was released from federal custody on Thursday after serving nearly nine years of 10-year self-punishment.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed in an email that Peter Madoff was released from prison on August 13 after being transferred from the Federal Correctional Institution, Miami on November 19, 2019.
A lawyer by training and the former director of Bernie Madoff, Peter Madoff in 2012 guilty of one count of forgery of records and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud.
Those crimes helped Bernie Madoff defraud billions of dollars in investors in one of the most high-profile Ponzi schemes in American history.
Peter was sentenced to 10 years in prison and was scheduled for release in 2021. Bernie pleaded guilty in March 2009 and is serving a 150-year work sentence.
More recently, a federal judge in June denied a request to release Bernie Madoff early from his sentence despite his plea that he die of kidney disease.
Judge Denny Chin’s ruling stated that Bernie Madoff, 82, “commits one of the most heinous financial crimes of all time”, and that “many people still suffer” it.
“When I sentenced Mr Madoff in 2009, it was entirely my intention to spend the rest of his life in prison. His lawyers then asked for a sentence of 12 to 15 to 20 years, specifically with the hope that Mr. Madoff would live to “see the light of day,” Chin wrote in June.
“I was not convinced; I did not believe that Mr Madoff deserved that hope,” he added. “Nothing has happened in the 11 years since my thinking changed.”
Bernie Madoff is currently being held at a federal medical facility in North Carolina.
– CNBC’s Dan Mangan reporting contributed.
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