Bernie Madoff's Impending Plea Bargain

The Shtunk, uber-crook Bernie Madoff, is moving ever-closer to a plea bargain with federal prosecutors in New York. He just waived a grand jury review of the allegations against him, which means dickering is underway.

Given the intense publicity focused on this case, it's hard to believe that prosecutors are engaged in plea bargain out of the goodness of their hearts. Clearly The Shtunk has something to give in return. But what?

There's been some speculation, I call it the Serial Killer Theory, that Bernie has stashed away some bucks somewhere, and that he is offering to the feds the location of where the bucks are buried. But that seems to be a remote possibility, since the feds presumably have other and better ways to get at the Shtunk's cash, to the extent any is left (such as by seizing that g---damn penthouse).

Or he could be ratting someone out. But who? The inflexible law of copland is that you "rat up," you don't "rat down." So that also doesn't seem likely.

The only other possibility is that the feds just don't have a strong enough case against the guy to guarantee a guilty verdict. That sounds a bit hard to believe, but I can't think of any others.

I'm excluding the possibility of sheer prosecutorial incompetence, though that can never be entirely ruled out.

Personally, and mind you I'm not a lawyer so I really am not qualified to say this, I can't understand why the feds haven't thrown the entire Madoff clan in jail—starting with wifey (see this post by Alexandra Penney) and the kids and including all the other people who were just shocked, shocked to find out there was a world-class Ponzi scheme operating a few feet away.

Ms. Penney is positively eloquent on the subject of wifey: "Mrs. MF (aka motherfucker), sweet innocent little Ruthie, the MF’s life-partner for over 50 years, may possess more colossal cojones and be a more repulsive sociopath than even the MF—although this is difficult to conceive of." Personally I think The Shtunk is a better handle for Bernie than mother-------, given the affinity-fraud nature of his crimes, though functionally synonymous.

I also don't see what would be wrong with putting the man on trial for his life. Sure it would take years to happen, and meanwhile The Shtunk would be living in a penthouse. So? Take away the penthouse.

© 2009 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.