Bernard Madoff did not get the longest ever white-collar prison sentence
On 29th June 2009, Bernard Madoff got 150 years behind bars for his role in the biggest ponzi scheme in history (USD65 billion).
Sure, 150 years is a mightly long time, but at least 3 others got even longer!
The champion is still Shalom [Sholam] Weiss (b 1954), former American businessman and a Rabbi of New York’s Hasidic Jewish community, who was sentenced to 845 years in the slammer in 2000.
Crime: Racketeering, fraud, money laundering of the National Heritage Life Insurance company, the largest insurance failure in history at the material time. The scam robbed thousands of pensioners of their life savings.
Well, at least he “can look forward to being released sometime around 2845.”
Sarcastic comment maybe, but definitely a lot of time to read diet pill reviews, not that they’ll overfeed you in prison.
At 2nd place is Weiss’s accomplice, Keith Pound.
He got slightly less: 740 years, but ended up serving only 4 – died in prison.
At 3rd place, Norman Schmidt who was already 72 years old when he was sentenced in April 2008 for a multimillion dollar investment pyramid scheme.
Jailtime: 330 years.
He scammed hundreds of investors, and used the money paid by paying himself – racing cars and a hotel.
