After stealing billions of dollars Convicted Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff is tormented by nightmares and his biggest regret is having torn his family apart. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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In a prison interview with ABC News’ Barbara Walters, the swindler says he can handle the wrath of his victims, but dealing with the pain he has inflicted on his wife and the suicide of his son is intolerable.
“Not seeing my family and knowing they hate me” is the worst thing about being in prison, he said in a two-hour-long interview in North Carolina.
“I betrayed them.”
Madoff, who was sentenced to 150 years in prison for orchestrating a $65 billion investment fraud, had an emotional meeting with his wife after their son, Mark, took his own life last December.
Ruth Madoff asked her husband of 52 years to “let her go,” and the couple have not been in contact since.
“Ruth not communicating is the hardest thing,” Madoff said.
“Ruth doesn’t hate me. She has no one. It’s not fair to her. She lost her first son. … She is a devoted wife and didn’t care about the money.”
Mark Madoff’s widow, Stephanie Madoff Mack, has also said she would “spit in his face” if she saw her father-in-law again, according to ABC News.
The interview took place in the Federal Correction Complex at Butler, N.C., on Oct. 14.
Madoff, 73, said he is relieved to no longer live in fear and spends much of his time reading.
He has also worked at least six different jobs behind bars, earning $170 a month.
“I deserved to be punished. I deserved to go to jail,” he said.
“I feel safer here than outside,” he said.
“Days go by. I have people to talk to and no decisions to make. … I know that I will die in prison. I lived the last 20 years of my life in fear.
“Now I have no fear – nothing to think about because I’m no longer in control of my own life.”
Madoff has fewer regrets about the pain he has inflicted on his investors, many of whom saw their life savings wiped out after trusting Madoff with their cash.
“I understand why clients hate me,” he said. “The gravy train is over. I can live with that.
“The average person thinks I robbed widows and orphans,” he added.
“I made wealthy people wealthier.”
Madoff has been on suicide watch but admits not having “enough courage” to kill himself.
On Christmas Eve 2008, Ruth also claims she and Madoff made a failed attempt to take their own lives by overdosing on pills.
“I took what we had, he took more,” she says in an interview on CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”
Asked what he would like to say to his grandchildren, Madoff told Barbara Walters: “I am sorry to have caused them pain.”
