Bernie Madoff, the man who fleeced billions of dollars from investors through an elaborate Ponzi scheme has apparently reached room temperature at age 82 while incarcerated at Con College in Butner, North Carolina. The Associated Press is reporting:

Bernie Madoff, the financier who pleaded guilty to orchestrating the largest Ponzi scheme in history, died in a federal prison early Wednesday, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

Madoff died at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, apparently from natural causes, the person said. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity. 

The elderly Madoff’s attorney had previously worked to get him released from prison due to his age and health, with CNBC noting:

Madoff was serving a 150-year sentence at the prison, where he had been treated for what his attorney called terminal kidney disease. His request for compassionate release from prison was denied in June.

When it came to financial fraud, Bernie was one badass bandit until he got caught. However, the people who found their retirement funds fleeced were none too happy with Madoff’s machinations. An amazing array of investors were taken advantage of by Bernie the Bandit:

He pleaded guilty in 2009 to a scheme that investigators said started in the early 1970s and defrauded as many as 37,000 people in 136 countries over four decades by the time Madoff was busted on Dec. 11, 2008 — after his two sons turned him in. Victims included the famous — director Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon, former New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon, Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Weisel — and ordinary investors, like Burt Ross, who lost $5 million in the scheme. 

As a former federal inmate, I know that Butner is a medical facility for inmates who require a higher degree of medical care than the half-assed care available in traditional federal facilities. As noted in my prison memoir Laughing All the Way to the Bank (Robbery): How an Attorney Survived Prison, Butner was considered by some inmates as a preferred place to do time.

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