Poor Ruthie — she’s reduced to riding the subway.
The millionaire wife of Bernard Madoff, who ruined the lives of thousands of trusting friends and innocent investors, yesterday took a stroll through Rockefeller Plaza and rode the F train beneath an ad promoting a 99-cent cellphone bargain.
And she might need it.
The once-stylish Ruth sported the oversized jacket and unfashionable flats she’s been wearing in public since news of the financial fraud broke.
She was also having another bad-hair day. Since her upscale hairstylist, Pierre Michel, banned her from his salon, it’s been streaked with gray instead of highlights.
And guess whom she blames for losing her lavish lifestyle?
“Are you having fun embarrassing me — and ruining my life?” she angrily snapped at a Post photographer.
But while she’s going around town whining to anyone who’ll listen, she’s never shown the slightest sympathy toward the people who lost everything in her husband’s $65 billion swindle.
Ruth has not been charged in connection with Madoff’s crimes — despite having worked at his Manhattan investment firm — and still lives in their luxury East Side penthouse, even as many of her husband’s victims are on the verge of losing their own homes.
Since his arrest in December, she has had to endure the indignity of having her Florida mansion, a chateau on the French Riviera and several yachts seized by authorities.
Meanwhile yesterday, Bernie learned he’ll be going out in style at his sentencing Monday.
Manhattan federal Judge Denny Chin — who can sentence the megacrook to up to 150 years behind bars — gave Madoff permission to wear his own clothes instead of jail-issue navy-blue scrubs at the proceedings.
Since his arrest, the notoriously obsessive-compulsive Madoff has worn virtually the same ensemble — a single-breasted, charcoal-gray suit with white shirt and solid dark tie — at all court appearances.
Chin also gave prosecutors an extra 90 days after the sentencing to set a possible “restitution schedule” for Madoff to pay back, however slightly, his victims.
“I find that the number of victims, the difficulties posed by the lack of proper record-keeping, and the scope, complexity, and duration of the fraud make it impossible, at this stage, to determine whether restitution is practicable,” Chin wrote.