Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff says that he is dying from kidney disease

Notorious Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff has announced that he is dying from kidney cancer. 

The 81-year-old fraudster, who is currently serving a 150-year prison sentence in North Carolina, is seeking an early release on compassionate grounds. 

Madoff’s lawyer wrote in a new legal filing Wednesday that his client has ‘less than 18 months to live’ due to end-stage renal disease.  

‘Madoff does not dispute the severity of his crimes nor does he seek to minimize the suffering of his victims. Madoff has expressed remorse for his crimes,’ attorney Brandon Sample wrote in the filing in US District Court in Manhattan.

‘Now, after over ten years of incarceration and with less than 18 months to live, Madoff humbly asks this Court for a modicum of compassion.’   

Sample argued that a prison term which was ‘just and proportionate at the time of sentencing may become disproportionately severe based on changed circumstances, such as terminal illness’. 

Madoff was sentenced in 2009 after pleading guilty to 11 federal felonies for swindling investors out of an estimated $65billion in the largest Ponzi scheme in world history. 

The disgraced financier confirmed in a telephone interview that he was ‘terminally ill’.

‘There’s no cure for my type of disease. So you know, I’ve served. I’ve served 11 years already, and, quite frankly, I’ve suffered through it,’ Madoff told the Washington Post, about his request for the early release.

Few inmates have been granted such a request seeking compasionate release, reports the Post. The Federal Bureau of Prisons created the program in 1984, and since then, bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation has afforded prisoners the opportunity to appeal denials, which is what Madoff is seeking.

The response to the request will demonstrate the justice system’s capacity for showing pity to a dying inmate, versus the gravity of the crimes committed. 

In Madoff’s case, his conviction was based on the what is considered the greatest Ponzi scheme in US history. Thousands of victims of the multi-billion dollar fraud which collapsed in 2008 lost their entire savings.

He previously made an appeal to President Donald Trump to reduce his sentence last year. 

The lead prosecutor in the case against Madoff called the clemency request ‘the very definition of chutzpah’ after the petition was made public in July.  

Marc Litt told CNBC at the time: ‘Bernard Madoff received a fair and just sentence – one that both appropriately punished him for decades of criminal conduct that caused devastating damage to tens of thousands of victims, and sent a loud and clear message to deter would-be fraudsters.

‘I’m confident that the career [Justice Department] attorneys responsible for evaluating such requests will reject it out of hand.’

It is unclear whether Trump examined the request and the current status of the petition is unclear.  

Madoff suffered a heart attack in 2014, but his lawyer told ABC two years later that he was ‘doing as well as could be expected’. 

This is a developing story.