Check your foreign currency exchange rates against the Thai Baht with Bangkok Bank.

Bernard Madoffs $65 billion fraud

More than 100 former clients who lost money in the $65bn Ponzi scheme outline the devastation wreaked on their lives in statements to the judge

Check out Pattaya/Bangkok Shipping & Transport services

Dressed in a dark suit, Madoff, who admitted in March to running a $65bn (£40bn) Ponzi scheme for the past three decades, will serve 150 years, Denny Chin, a US District Judge, told a packed courtroom in New York.

Judge Chin said that the 'symbolism' of the sentence is important. Madoff, who kept his eyes down during much of the testimony, told the court that "I don't ask for any forgiveness." The 71-year-old former money manager, whose defence lawyer last week pleaded for him to serve a total of 12 years, has come for many to symbolise the greed and excess of the financial boom. Several of his victims got the chance to tell their stories in court. Dominic Ambrosino, a former prison officer, told the court that he and his wife Ronnie Sue that they had their "entire life savings wiped out". Madoff kept his eyes down as his victims spoke. A sizable proportion of his victims were middle-class public school teachers, farmers and mechanics. Many are now struggling to pay their bills.

Victims of the so-called Ponzi scheme stretched from celebrities, including film director Steven Spielberg and actor Kevin Bacon, to a string of high-profile financial institutions such as Spain's Santander.

In total, about 1,341 account holders lost out in the classic “cash in, cash out” fraud, according to court papers. The scheme lured new investors with the promise of large returns, and used that cash to deliver the returns to earlier investors.Named after Charles Ponzi - who ran such a fraud in America in the 1920s - the scheme eventually collapsed when the credit crisis prompted investors to withdraw their funds.

Today's sentencing is the latest chapter in the Madoff fraud that has unravelled with lightning speed since December. He first confessed to his two sons, Mark and Andrew, that month before telling a FBI agent that there was no “innocent explanation”.After three months under house arrest he pleaded guilty to 11 counts of fraud, mail and money laundering in March, at which point Judge Chin revoked his bail. Madoff has spent the past three months in a 7.5ft by 8ft cell in the high-security wing of Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Centre.

Born to a Jewish family in New York on April 29, 1938, Madoff founded Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities with the 5,000 dollars he had saved at the age of 22, before branching into investment banking and a hedge fund business. Madoff leaves Atlanta lockup, headed to NC prison Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff has left a federal prison in Atlanta and is heading to his new home in a North Carolina prison.Federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Linda Thomas on Tuesday said Madoff has left the penitentiary in Atlanta. He arrived there Monday.Thomas would not say where Madoff is headed, but a law enforcement official told The Associated Press Madoff is destined for a federal prison in Butner, N.C., to begin serving his 150-year-sentence.

MORE CHARGED:

Federal regulators have charged a brokerage firm called Cohmad Securities and four people with securities fraud, accusing them of funneling billions of dollars from investors into Bernard Madoff’s pyramid scheme. The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the civil fraud charges on Monday against Cohmad, its chairman, Maurice Cohn, chief operating officer Marcia Cohn and broker Robert Jaffe. Also named in the SEC’s lawsuit was California-based investment adviser Stanley Chais, who allegedly oversaw three funds that invested all of their assets — nearly $1 billion — with Madoff. Madoff secretly controlled New York-based Cohmad and used it to procure a constant stream of funds for his multibillion-dollar fraud scheme, the SEC said.

The nother is Frank DiPascali who Modoff claims knows more about the disappearance of money who is locked up trying to get bail and doing a deal with the Feds. This guy and Madoff are the worst of the bunch

The company's website may be found here: http://www.madoff.com/