Peter Madoff in 2002.
Getty Images
The younger brother of infamous financier and Ponzi swindler Bernard Madoff was released from federal custody on Thursday after serving about nine years of a 10-year sentence.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed in an email that Peter Madoff was released from home confinement on Aug. 13 after being transferred from the Federal Correctional Institution, Miami on Nov. 19, 2019.
A lawyer by training and Bernie Madoff’s former compliance director, Peter Madoff in 2012 pleaded guilty to one count of falsifying records and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud.
Those crimes helped Bernie Madoff swindle investors out of billions of dollars in one of the most high-profile Ponzi schemes in U.S. history.
Peter was sentenced to 10 years in prison and had been scheduled for release in 2021. Bernie pleaded guilty in March 2009 and is serving a 150-year sentence.
More recently, a federal judge in June rejected a request to release Bernie Madoff early from his sentence despite his pleas that he is dying from kidney disease.
Judge Denny Chin’s ruling noted that Bernie Madoff, 82, committed “one of the most egregious financial crimes of all time,” and that “many people are still suffering from” it.
“When I sentenced Mr. Madoff in 2009, it was fully my intent that he live out the rest of his life in prison. His lawyers asked then for a sentence of 12 to 15 to 20 years, specifically with the hope that Mr. Madoff would live to see ‘the light of day,'” Chin wrote in June.
“I was not persuaded; I did not believe that Mr. Madoff was deserving of that hope,” he added. “Nothing has happened in the 11 years since to change my thinking.”
Bernie Madoff is currently being held at a federal medical facility in North Carolina.
— CNBC’s Dan Mangan contributed reporting.
Subscribe to CNBC PRO for exclusive insights and analysis, and live business day programming from around the world.
