Bernie Madoff leaves a Federal court after trial in New York on March 10, 2009. (Xinhua)
WASHINGTON, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Notorious Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, who pleaded guilty to 11 financial crimes in 2009, is asking U.S. President Donald Trump to shorten his 150-year prison sentence.
Madoff, 81, filed the request with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), seeking to "finish his life in freedom" after running the biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history, the Bloomberg reported.
Madoff was arrested in December 2008 for running a multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme -- an investment fraud promising high returns, with early investors paid off with money from later investors.
The financial swindler is serving a 150-year sentence in a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina since July 2009, after he committed crimes, including fraud, money laundering and perjury.
Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee to handle the dissolution of Madoff's investment firm, has recovered over 13 billion U.S. dollars for the victims, some of whom had lost their life savings.
Another 860 million dollars might soon be returned to the customers, Reuters reported last week.
The federal government, meanwhile, has a separate 4 billion fund to compensate Madoff's victims, and the DOJ has announced several rounds of distribution of recovered funds.
The DOJ statistics showed that the department received 1,003 petitions for pardons and another 5,657 for sentence commutations that could have been considered by Trump since he was in the White House, but Trump has granted just 10 pardons and four commutations, CNBC reported.
