Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison yesterday for perpetrating Wall Street's biggest investment fraud.

Cheers and applause came from the courtroom - filled with his fleeced investors - as the judge handed down the penalty, apparently unconvinced that Madoff had co-operated with investigators or told the full story.

Madoff, 71, stood passively with his hands clasped at his waist, showing no reaction when he heard the sentence that will send him to prison for the rest of his life.

The former non-executive chairman of the Nasdaq stock market has been jailed in a Manhattan cell since he pleaded guilty to 11 charges including securities fraud, money laundering and perjury in March.

'Here the message must be sent that Madoff's crimes were extraordinarily evil,' US District Court Judge Denny Chin was quoted as saying in our sister publication, the Gulf Daily News.

'The breach of trust was massive. I simply do not get the sense that Madoff has done all that he could or told all that he knows.'

It was not yet known where Madoff will serve his sentence for orchestrating what prosecutors described as a $65 billion worldwide fraud of small and wealthy investors, charities and financial institutions.

Chin pronounced the punishment after hearing emotional statements from nine of Madoff's victims, some of whom said they had lost their life savings, were forced to sell their homes, had to apply for government assistance to buy food, and feared an old age in poverty.

'I only hope that his prison sentence is long enough so that his jail cell will become his coffin,' said Michael Schwartz, 33, who said his family had been robbed of savings to be used to care for his mentally disabled brother.

Madoff sat passively throughout the hour-and-a-half hearing as his victims called him a 'beast,' an 'animal' and a 'lowlife.'

He apologised to his victims, at one point briefly turning in the direction of the 250 people gathered in the courtroom.

'I will live with this pain, with this torment, for the rest of my life,' he said.

'I live in a tormented state knowing the pain and suffering I have created.'

His arrest last December came just as investors were suffering the worst financial crisis since the 1930s Great Depression. The case has triggered widespread criticism of US securities regulators accused of missing numerous red flags about his asset management business.

While a much lower sentence would also have sent Madoff to prison for life, Chin said Madoff deserved the maximum, typically handed down to organised crime bosses.

'The fraud here was staggering,' the judge said. – TradeArabia News Service