The Balance Sheet (The Madoff Edition)

This morning, another round of the Ponzi scheme heard around the world will come to an end: in a few minutes, Bernie, and the rest of us, will find out how long he’ll have to serve behind bars for swindling scores of folks out of billions of dollars.

It’s expected that the Ponz will have to chill inside the slammer for the rest of his days, though there is an outside chance that B. Madoff could get less than 15 years, with a few months shaved off for good behavior, and be back on the streets sometime in the 2020s.

In total, Madoff faces 150 years behind bars. So, in honor of this historic sentence, here are a few more figures, thus far, from the Madoff mayhem:

Number of counts of theft, perjury, money laundering and fraud to which Madoff admitted his guilt: 11

Madoff’s current age in years: 72

Number of letters sent by victims of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme to U.S. District Judge Denny Chin: 113

Number of claims sent out by Irving Picard, the trustee responsible to liquidating Madoff’s assets: 8,000

Value, in inflation-adjusted dollars, that Madoff originally invested to start his penny stock trading firm: 35,000

Donations in dollars given by Madoff and his brother Peter Madoff to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association: 56,000

Since 1991, dollars of political donations made by Ruth and Bernie Madoff: 230,000

(Percent of the donations that went to Democrats: 88)

Dollar value of Ruth Madoff’s jewelry: 2,600,000

Dollar value of The Madoff Family Foundation which donates to hospitals, theaters and educational groups: 19,000,000

Dollar value of Madoff’s four homes: 22,000,000

Dollars lost by Nobel Prize Winner Elie Wiesel and his charitable foundation in Madoff’s Ponzi scheme: 37,000,000

Estimated total value, in dollars, of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme: 65,000,000,000