Madoff Tips for Prison

Today Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 125 years in prison. To send him off here are a few tips for Madoff on going to prison, bullet points are borrowed from a prison blog Top 10 prison survival

1. Keep your mouth shut
   Shouldn’t be a problem Madoff ran his scam for years before he was eventually caught. In fact the folklore around Madoff was that if an investor cornered him at a public function and pushed him to talk about their investment that he would pickup the phone and have their investment canceled.
2. Don’t get involved with gambling
   Running a ponzi scheme is a lot like gambling, you never know when the house is going to call in your chips, for Madoff that day came on December 11th 2008 when FBI officers took Madoff into custody. Hopefully he has had his fill of gambling.
3. Don’t borrow unless you can pay back
   Not so good with this one. If you borrow in prison the interest rate is phenomenal and payment means are, well, lets say nontraditional.  Madoff has left investors with a whopping 65 Billion dollars in unpaid debt, likely much of it will never be fully recovered.
4. Develop a skill that is useful to other inmates
   I’d recommend teaching United States Fraud laws as I am sure he is well versed with it… now.
5. Don’t be a loner find a group
   Bernie has the gift of the gab, the first groups he targeted when starting out his scam were people from the New York Jewish community. He probably won’t find a huge populations of older Jewish men in prison, or really want them to have his back though.