Bernie Madoff and Jonathan Pollard Are Prison Pals, Filing Says
Bernard Madoff may have lost all of his old friends, but he’s made some unlikely new ones — and among them is convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, according to a recent court filing.
Madoff is now serving a 150-year-sentence in the North Carolina federal prison that also houses Pollard and mob boss Carmine Perisco, who is reported to be another one of the convicted Ponzi schemer’s prison pals.
The court papers, which support a lawsuit filed on behalf of several Madoff victims, contain details about the scammer’s bleak life in the slammer: Madoff apparently shares a prison cell and a bunk bed — Madoff sleeps on the bottom bunk — with a 21-year-old convicted drug offender, and “eats pizza cooked by an inmate convicted of child molestation.” (That’s quite a change for a man who, until recently, lived in an Upper East Side penthouse and dined frequently at Primola nearby.)
But then again, Madoff may have something in common with his new roommate: The same court papers allege that, beginning in 1975, Madoff tasked a staffer at his investment firm with procuring drugs for himself and other company employees; the filing also says that Madoff would hire topless, G-string-clad entertainers to perform in his Midtown office.
Watch this report for more on the court filings:
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
