Yes and no. While it's true that there is no official protection from the government now, any deal he would have made would have required him to divulge information about the entire scam and would likely have implicated his family. So making a deal for a lighter sentence would have hurt his family more than pleading guilty and shutting his mouth. He is protecting the family from the government as best he can by staying quiet. They are more protected this way.

I suppose time will tell. If he had a made a deal, he might have been able to get them immunity. But then again, maybe not. IF they are guilty, I hope they go down as well. Too many people and organizations were hurt by his actions.

Billionaire Stanford to take the 5th in fraud case

Anyone for waterboarding?

No.

Yeah, I have a comment. He's been wearing a bullet-proof vest going to court, because so many people are so angry, but his big giant pasty head is hanging out there like a beacon. Why don't people ever get bullet-proof ski masks or something?

lol.

Should I have put a smilie on that Pie?

No. It's still a little too close to the bone for me to take it as a joke.
But to quote you -- "Hey, my views aren't popular, they're just mine."

Well it was intended as a joke.

But... but...

WTF? Please explain.

Try this

Just making sure I understand... So your desire to see his wife/children prosecuted stems entirely from the hypothesis that they are also guilty? And their guilt rests entirely on whether they *knew* Madoff was doing illegal things, not necessarily participating in the business? And then based on that, you would support confiscating "their assets as well" (say, his wife's salary from some unrelated job) because they are guilty to begin with so their punishment can be in any form?

So if I steal a million dollars, and just walk up and give it to a stranger on the street, that stranger doesn't have to return it?

If someone was knowingly doing something illegal, yes. Otherwise, wouldn't we have to punish everyone who worked there? As far as confiscating the wife's salary from another job or other unrelated sources.... I dunno how to figure all that out. Thats a little beyond me. I guess if we could say that she is responsible for x dollars illegally then she should surrender that same amount. Could/should we add a punitive amount on top of that??? I don't know how to calculate all of it. What do you think?

Person A owns a car.
Person B steals it and sells it to person C, who does not know it is stolen.

Dunno about you lot, but down here, C is not guilty of any crime, but must give the car back to A.
General principle: you can't keep stolen stuff even if you didn't know it was stolen when you got it.

So for the Madoff family, they should be stipped of all assets that the didn't earn themselves. IMHO YMMV etc...

The whole family were officers in Madoff's operation. It's impossible for them not to have known.:eyebrow: