Up Front - Is Bernard Madoff’s sentence justifiable?

Emily Plihal
Express staff

Imagine having to tell your family and friends that you’ve scammed millions of dollars from innocent individuals from across the United States.

Bernard Madoff pled guilty to 11 counts of criminal complaint. He admitted to defrauding thousands of investors of billions of dollars. He was also convicted of operating a Ponzi scheme that has been noted as the biggest investor fraud ever committed by a single person.

Prosecutors in the case estimated their clients losses to be a total of approximately $65 billion.

Madoff was sentenced on June 29 to 150 years in prison, which coincidentally is the maximum number of years allowed by the US justice system.

Madoff (who is 71 years old) is a former American financier. Now his claim to fame will not be his expertise with financial issues, he will now be known as the guy who was jailed for life for scamming billions of dollars of people’s life savings.

Madoff founded one of the top market maker businesses on Wall Street called Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. He was the chairman until his arrest on Dec. 11, 2008.

Imagine being Madoff’s wife or children. His wife was sitting pretty, knowing her husband had made a great living by investing others’ money. Her world was suddenly turned inside out when she found out about his “side job” that coincidentally would land him in jail for the duration of his life.

She’s had her life completely turned inside out. Now she’s been forced to live with family because their condo was seized.

How can we unknowingly live with someone who is making millions of dollars by scamming thousands of other people?

I cannot argue with the sentence Madoff received, what I am curious about though, is why scamming money seems to garnish a larger penalty than murder or rape.

How do we classify importance when setting a sentence for criminals?

By giving Madoff a sentence of 150 years for fraudulent acts, and only giving a murder (in Canada) a few year sentence, are we saying money is more important than a human life?

This Madoff situation brought back the sentence given to the individual who beheaded young Tim McLean on the Greyhound bus.

Vince Weiguang Li brutally beheaded the young 22 year old man, and virtually got away with psychiatric evaluation.

I’ve had friends who have been hurt or killed by individuals and their sentences have not been even comparable to Madoff’s.

I’m not saying the judicial system in North America is completely wrong, but perhaps a set rule as to how many years each individual gets for certain crimes is necessary.

I think it’s quite bogus that we allow parole for criminals for good behaviour.

If you sentence a criminal to five years in prison for murdering someone, they should have to serve all five years.

Do I think Madoff’s sentence is justifiable when I compare it to other crimes? No, I do not. I’m glad he was handed a lengthy sentence, but let’s be reasonable. The man is 71, and may only live for another 20 years.

He was likely the result of many deaths in the United States, what with suicides from financial stress being possible. However; he stole money, not lives.

Let’s crack down on criminals who sell heavy drugs to minors, who kill innocent people, and who forcefully cause problems in our society.

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