Washington - Bernard Madoff, serving 150 years in prison for running a 65-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme, got into a prison yard fight after an argument with another inmate over the stock market, the New York Post reported Tuesday. The argument between Madoff, 71, and the other inmate got heated, prompting the other inmate to shove the man who was once a respected Wall Street figure. Madoff pushed back, causing the other inmate to fall and then run away, prisoners at the federal prison in North Carolina told the newspaper. Prison guards reportedly did not witness the altercation.
Madoff was arrested in December and pleaded guilty in March to running a pyramid or Ponzi scheme, under which his firm paid huge returns to old investors by collecting money from new ones. The scheme had been going since at least the 1990s.
In June, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison - the judge said that he handed out the longest possible term in keeping with the "unprecedented" fraud Madoff committed. The financier responsible for Wall Street's biggest investment fraud was transferred in July to a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina, and is expected to remain in prison for the rest of his life.
