Bernard Madoff With $50 Billion; Under House Arrest In $7 Million Home

Home detention with electronic monitoring is what Bernard Madoff will get for being accused of the largest case of fraud in U.S. history. Madoff is going to remain free instead of going to jail after being accused of $50 billion scheme that took investors for a ride.

Under house arrest in his $7 million Park Avenue apartment, Madoff was given a slap on the wrist by federal prosecutors under the terms of an agreement announced just today. Just last week Madoff couldn't meet the conditions of his bond set by a federal magistrate, which required him to get four people to sign a personal recognizance bond. Only his wife and brothers were willing to vouch for him. So, instead, he will remain under house arrest, living in luxury.

Madoff will serve his sentence in his upper east side Manhattan apartment fitted with an electronic monitoring device and be under curfew from 7PM to 9AM daily. In addition, Madoff's wife will place their mansions in Palm Beach, Florida and in Montauk on New York's Long Island in her name under the terms set by the court.

FBI agents were able to get Madoff to admit to single handedly scamming tons of investors in a Ponzi scheme that resulted in $50 billion made by Madoff.
As a former chairman of NASDAQ, Madoff served as an investment advisor who served a small number of high net worth clients. One of Madoff's former clients told ABC news that even though Madoff was under investigation by the feds; he was still sought after by this group of high ticket investors.

Madoff was go skilled at investing, that his clients normally received double digit returns no matter if the market was up or down. As recently as two months ago, Madoff was turning new business away.
Documents filed by the SEC in January of this year, Bernard Madoff Investment Securities had around 25 clients for the fiscal year ending October 2007 and was managing $17 billion in assets using 23 different accounts.

Madoff's firm was the 23rd largest market maker on NASDAQ as of October, responsible for daily averages of 50 million shares a day. The firm took orders for some of the largest companies in the U.S. Madoff specialized in handling orders from online brokers that included General Electric and Citigroup. Citigroup has been suffering recently in this financial crisis and is under government oversight at the moment.

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