Evil Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff loves prison and even boasted in a jailhouse letter that he is “quite the celebrity” and is treated like a “Mafia don” behind bars.
“They call me either Uncle Bernie or Mr. Madoff,” Bernie wrote his daughter-in-law — who had written him, expecting to hear about his “suffering.”
Instead, Madoff told her: “I can’t walk anywhere without someone shouting their greetings and encouragement, to keep my spirit up. It’s really quite sweet, how concerned everyone is about my well-being, including the staff . . . It’s much safer here than walking the streets of New York.”
Stephanie Madoff Mack dropped the bombshell in her book, “The End of Normal,” which hit bookstores yesterday.
“I wanted to know how cold and uncomfortable the cot was after a lifetime of 800-thread-count Egyptian cotton linens and European goosedown comforters,” she wrote. “I wanted to hear how isolated and lonely he felt, how bored he was, how grim the rest of his life would be. And most of all, I wanted to make Bernie Madoff suffer some more.”
Instead, Madoff told her he was “pumping iron, and had plenty of recreational classes to choose from.” He compared prison to a college campus, with “lovely lawns and trees” and said other inmates treat him with respect and admiration.