I was relieved when I read this afternoon that Bernard Madoff received the full sentence requested by lawyers prosecuting his case: 150 years. In contrast, Madoff's lawyer's request for 12 was both a joke and an insult to the people whose lives Madoff all but destroyed.

The presiding judge, Denny Chin, said he wanted to make an example of Madoff and believed that levying the full 150 years would be a deterrent to future white-collar criminals. The Madoff sentence is the third-longest for any white collar crime, according to a compilation by Forbes.

The $65 billion Ponzi scheme that Madoff had constructed since the 1980s was a vast, far-reaching deception. It convinced thousands of people that Madoff was a man with eminent financial savvy, an ability to turn modest wealth into a fortune through wise investments. But all he was really doing was taking the money from new, unsuspecting customers and giving it to older clients to create the illusion of successful returns. It was a gigantic jig-saw puzzle with numerous missing pieces, and eventually the 71-year-old Madoff could no longer keep up the charade.

When he ran out of money last December, and told his kids about the Ponzi scheme, it's doubtful that Madoff thought that in just six months he'd be facing life behind bars. But even if he did suspect this fate, his apology to his victims rings as hollow as the investments he pretended to be making.

During his trial, Madoff turned to his victims and apologized, claiming that he lives in a tormented state for what he's done, and while he knows it won't make any difference, he feels he must say how sorry he is.

Bull. He's not tormented for defrauding his clients; he's tormented because he's been living in a holding cell in Lower Manhattan for nearly four months. If he really feels bad about what he did, he wouldn't have spent 20+ years doing it.

Madoff will most likely be sentenced to a medium-security prison in Upstate New York or New Jersey, to ensure that he is close to his family. Authorities do not intend to sentence him to a maximum-security facility because he is not a violent criminal, but his sentence is also too long for him to be a candidate for a minimum-security prison or a "prison camp" -- a facility in which prisoners are granted maximum freedom and the illusion of being outside through open-air yards with fences instead of walls.

Madoff is likely to find his next job in the kitchen or laundry of his new home, earning no more than 40 cents an hour.

[Image: The AM New York blog]