Navigate to News section

Madoff Suffered Heart Attack Behind Bars

The 75-year-old convicted Ponzi schemer temporarily hospitalized last month

by
Stephanie Butnick
January 22, 2014
Bernard L. Madoff leaves US Federal Court after a hearing regarding his bail on January 14, 2009 in New York. (TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)
Bernard L. Madoff leaves US Federal Court after a hearing regarding his bail on January 14, 2009 in New York. (TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)

Bernard Madoff, the 75-year-old finance titan convicted of the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history, reportedly had a heart attack last month in prison, CNBC reports. Madoff, who is serving a 150-year prison sentence at a medium security federal prison in Butner, N.C., was hospitalized at Duke University Medical Center after the incident, and has since returned to Butner.

It’s been five years since Madoff’s fraud was uncovered, and the saga of his monumental ripoff has continued to unravel, with widespread losses impacting Jewish institutions to this day. His projected release date is a futuristic November 2139, but it’s unclear how many years of his sentence Madoff will make it through given his declining health. He’s said to also have stage four kidney disease, and is no longer receiving dialysis.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.