Bernie Madoff, who got rich running a New York-based Ponzi scheme that lost $64.8 billion, ended his days earning only 24 cents an hour for orderly work in federal prison, documents obtained by THE CITY reveal.
The mastermind behind the country’s biggest investment scam struggled like other people locked up — and refused dialysis that likely could have significantly extended his life, according to his Federal Bureau of Prisons file, secured via a Freedom of Information Law request.
He died from kidney failure in a prison hospital in Butner, N.C., on April 14 after serving nine years of a 150-year sentence. The Queens-reared scam artist ripped off more than 37,000 people from 25 countries during years of subterfuge, according to authorities.
Among Madoff’s clients were his hometown Mets, whose owners in 2012 struck a deal to pay $162 million to the Ponzi scheme’s victims. In 2016, the amount was reduced to $61 million. It’s unclear how much money made it to any of those cheated.
Madoff’s 1,425-page prison file was heavily redacted with all the names of his visitors, and the name of another federal prisoner he sought to contact, blotted out.
He was constantly asked to sit for deposition interviews by lawyers who were desperately trying to figure out a way to…
