Apparently, Bernie Madoff does have a heart.
The Ponzi villain suffered a heart attack that caused him to be temporarily transferred from his federal lockup in North Carolina, according to a report.
Madoff, 75, and in the fourth year of a 150-year sentence for his epic $17 billion investor fraud, is also suffering from stage-four kidney disease, but is not undergoing dialysis, CNBC reported Wednesday.
Federal prison officials declined to comment on Madoff’s medical history or condition, but did confirm to The Post that he is back in Butner Federal Correctional Complex, a medium-security facility 25 miles northwest of Raleigh.
Madoff told CNBC in an e-mail that he was hospitalized last month for the heart attack at Duke University Medical Center.
“He’s a bad man, and I don’t feel bad for him,” victim Sheila Ennis, 68, of Manhattan Beach, Fla., said of Madoff’s ill health. “But you have to move on. Life’s too short — and for him, I hope it will be very short.”
Madoff has had several health and family setbacks since pleading guilty in 2009 to a decades-long scheme that cheated thousands of investors, using new investors to pay returns to older clients.
His brother, Peter, is serving a decade in prison for conspiring in the scheme as managing director for the firm.
A son, Mark Madoff, 46, hanged himself in his Soho apartment Dec. 11, 2010, the second anniversary of his dad’s arrest.
His only surviving son, Andrew Madoff, 47, is receiving treatment for stage-four mantle-cell lymphoma. He’s said he will “never forgive” his father. Madoff’s ex-wife, Ruth, 71, now lives with Andrew in his home in Greenwich, Conn., and also has disavowed Madoff.
Andrew said the cancer had been in remission for 10 years until the stress of his family’s travails caused its return.
“One way to think of this is the scandal and everything that happened killed my brother very quickly,” he told People magazine. “And it’s killing me slowly.”
“I feel the shame,” Ruth, who has insisted she had no knowledge of the scheme, complained on “60 Minutes” in 2011. “I can barely walk down the street without worrying about people recognizing me.”
Six former associates have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with the feds while five ex-staffers are on trial in Manhattan federal court for their alleged roles in the massive fraud.
Computer programmers Jerome O’Hara and George Perez, operations chief Dan Bonventre, and account manager Joann Crupi all declined comment on their ex-boss’ condition Wednesday while Madoff’s longtime secretary, Annette Borngiorno, said she did not even know he was sick.