Madoff being shipped to new prison to begin sentence

Bernard Madoff is on the road again.

The biggest swindler in Wall Street history has been shipped out of the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center and is in transit to his new prison to begin serving a 150-year sentence, a Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman in Manhattan said Monday.

For security reasons, bureau officials in New York and Washington, D.C., would not say where Madoff, 71, will wind up.

While initial reports said that Madoff, who admitted running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme for years, might be destined upstate for Otisville federal correctional institution, The Associated Press late Monday said he was on his way to Butner, N.C.

Madoff was moved at some point early Monday; he is still shown on the bureau's inmate locator record as being in Manhattan. The public inmate locator is updated once a day in the morning, so any change for Madoff wouldn't show until Tuesday at the earliest, said one official.

Defense attorney Ira Sorkin declined to comment on reports of Madoff's prison designation.

Because he is serving a sentence of more than 25 years, many law enforcement officials and some judges think Madoff will be doing his time at a high-security federal penitentiary.

Among the list of possible facilities are Allenwood, Lewisburg and Canaan penitentiaries, all in Pennsylvania. Otisville is about two hours from Manhattan, and is classified as a medium-security facility.

When Madoff was sentenced June 29, Judge Denny Chin recommended that he be sent to a facility in the Northeast, although such a judicial preference is not binding on the prison bureau.