You want the top bunk or the bottom, Bernie?
It ain’t a $7 million penthouse, but at least Bernard Madoff can still brag that he lives in Manhattan – for now – when he wakes up today in a cell like this one in the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
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Madoff – now known as Prisoner No. 61727-054 – yesterday spent what was likely to be his last-ever morning in his luxurious Upper East Side two-story apartment before pleading guilty to a huge Ponzi scheme.
The fallen investment maven promptly was jailed in the MCC, the lower-Manhattan facility where he’ll remain until his June 16 sentencing. After that, he will be assigned to a federal prison, possibly in upstate Otisville, Allenwood, Pa., or Elkton, Ohio.
Until then, instead of having four bedrooms, five bathrooms, a kitchen and a library to roam at will, Madoff will be caged like the rat that he is in an 8-foot-by-7½-foot cell.
The MCC has strict rules for its guests, who have included terrorists and mobsters, in addition to garden-variety killers and drug pushers.
Madoff, 70, will be awakened when the lights are switched on at 6 o’clock every morning, and will sit down to breakfast at 6:30 a.m. If he bothers to get an honest job for a change, Madoff will start work in the jail at 7:45 a.m.
But if Madoff decides he’s too good for a jailhouse job, he’ll have the opportunity to play pingpong, take a class or read a book from the jail’s library. Every other day, Madoff will be allowed outside with his fellow creeps for recreation.
Lunch is at 11 a.m., dinner’s at 5 – don’t ask what the food is like – and Madoff can tuck himself in on his definitely-not-a-Posturepedic bed at 11 p.m., when the lights go out.
Then it’s sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs – or your cellmate – bite, Bernie.