Your Verdicts For Madoff
By: 
Only a few more hours to submit your creative suggestions for Bernard Madoff's sentence.
Remember, nothing above a PG-13 rating!
I will stop taking submissions once court ends Thursday.
Then I will choose what I consider the top ten ideas (hey, it's my blog) and put them up for a vote.
The winner will receive a few rolls of Bernie Madoff toilet paper.
Some of the latest suggestions:
Dale N.:"Two hundreds lectures to be made by Mr. Madoff all across the country about why he did it, while only wearing a jockstrap. Question and answer sessions following. All proceeds go to a relief fund. Then 75 years in jail."
Jeff L:"Give him life…and then life support. We can watch him pay for generations."
Barrett Y.'s suggestion reminds me of an old "Seinfeld" episode: "He should be forced to watch 'The English Patient' 500,000,000,000,000 times in loop!"
Theo K.:"Drop him and his wife into the sewers of Long Island, close the hole, and see if they can make it back to Manhattan. It's just a big stinky puzzle. A smart man like that should find something to eat and drink on the way back, in a couple of months."Michael C:"He should be sentenced to work for Tim Geithner since no one else wants to."
Walter A:"Mr. Madoff should be sentenced to hard labor, making small rocks out of big rocks and letting victims volunteer to observe. They will be in charge of quality control to make sure the job is done to their satisfaction."
John H:"Make him live with Sarah Palin or Ann Coulter."
Bob K. brought up a common theme in your emails: "Just like the mob knows, the way to punish him is through his sons. His wife, his two sons and his grandchildren should all live like us working stiffs. They should go to public schools and stay awake at night worrying about health insurance and college tuitions."
Gene W.: "I think he should have to go ice fishing with the boys from Pittsfield Maine. We're going this weekend, after all. And as soon as we have him drill the holes in the ice, we would all look at each other and ask if anyone remembered to buy the bait. And then we would all stare at Madoff with that 'well, we have to make do with what we brought' look. He'll crack and tell us where the money is, or we'll show him where the fish are."
John T. expresses another common sentiment in some emails: "We should pray for him. We should condemn the sin and not the sinner, because what ever punishment he receives here on earth is going to seem like a walk in the park compared to what may be waiting for him."
Bill S.:"His sentence should be cleaning urinals and toilets. That way, he will understand, first hand, what it's like to be --it on."
Mark S., in a longer email, neatly summarizes hundreds of ideas you've submitted, putting them all into one "schedule": "I would consign him to live in a cardboard lean-to under a freeway bridge in New York City in the winter, and in hot, humid, mosquito infested Houston, Texas in the summer... For four hours each morning Madoff should be forced to scrounge for his food in the dumpsters and garbage cans of New York and Houston. He should also be forced to get his clothing from either the dumpsters or from a homeless shelter... He should be forced to work uncompensated for six hours each day for the Securities and Exchange Commission helping this agency to uncover other frauds and Ponzi schemes as I am sure we have only uncovered the tip of the iceberg. After getting off work he should be allowed to shower and shave at a homeless shelter. From six to nine o'clock each evening he should be forced to watch recorded videos of pictures and audio stories of what happened to the thousands of people he scammed and took advantage of... I would allow him to spend his entertainment hour each evening in 'stimulating intellectual' conversation with other homeless street people if he chose to do so. In short, I would consign him to the very life he has consigned his victims to for the rest of his life."
"PUT HIM IN CHARGE OF SOCIAL SECURITY"
More emailed suggestions for Bernard Madoff's sentence as part of our Funny Business contest.
Many of you have suggested Madoff be sent to Gitmo and waterboarded.
Others think he should "man the toilets in Mumbai" like the kid in "Slumdog Millionaire".
And we continue to get suggestions for certain pay-per-view events which I can't mention on a family website.
Here are some thoughts from readers:
William S.: "Tie him to a pole in Baghdad wearing a NY Yankee's shirt and a Salmon Rushdie ball cap."
Eric S.: "He has to write 50 billion times, 'I am a dirty, rotten, good-for-nothing scumbag' on a PC running Windows and if he gets a blue screen he has to start all over."
From Steve J., who says he lost some money to Madoff: "Let his life sentence be community service in the Gaza Strip. I would say that his actual sentence would be pretty short..."
Gary had a suggestion I heard from a few others: "Put Bernie in charge of the Social Security System, he already has experience running a Ponzi scheme."
Rob O.:"Pretty simple, he should sent to exile in Buffalo, New York. There he should be forced to follow around Terrell Owens (T.O.) 24/7. Would be great to see these two egomaniacs be forced to live together."
From WW in Vegas: "Put Madoff in a stock at the busiest freeway offramp in the country. Set up a booth just ahead that sells tomatoes for $5 each. All proceeds go to the folks this filthy thief ripped off..."
Bill K. merely sent the attached image of a stockade (a popular idea in many of your emails)
"SEND HIM TO AFGHANISTAN TO FIND BIN LADEN"
ML:"I'm a Marine. I would love to see him work for the military for e-1 wages for the rest of his life and live in government quarters.."
KD:"Place him in a Pope-mobile like vehicle and, on foot, carry him around NYC's, LA's, and Miami's exclusive restaurants and clubs. Let the vehicle stay for 30 minutes at each place and also place in it a sound amplifying machine."
Jayme K. says any tour should make money: "They should put him in a glass bubble and make him tour every city in the world wearing a prison uniform that says "Lonely, Pathetic and Shameful"...they should open the glass bubble at each stop and let people egg him for a nominal fee of $1. This would bring a new meaning of having 'egg on your face'. The investors could recoup billions of dollars over the next several years..."
Bill T:"Instead of sentencing him to incarceration time, sentence him to a given number of kilowatt hours, Put a treadmill in his cell, and let him generate electricity for the publicly owned Bonneville Power Commission as a positive contribution toward the common good."
Paul T:"From his cell in prison give him the task of counting, sorting by date, and rolling 50 billion pennies. That should take about 150 years..."
Matthew R.:"We could just abandon him in Afghanistan to find Osama Bin Laden - he seems to have a nose for finding money charitably given..."
Robert G. "Bernie Madoff should be referred to as 'bowel movement' from now on."
Juan O:"No doubt he should manage TARP III."
"MAKE HIM THE OCTUPLET MOM'S NANNY"
An earlier post:
We've received hundreds of emails for our contest suggesting the most creative sentence for Bernard Madoff, assuming he does, in fact, plead guilty Thursday.
Nearly everyone suggests selling off all of his family's assets and dividing the proceeds among victims, with the poorest victims getting paid first.
A lot of you suggest that he be forced to live on the streets, work in homeless shelters, or work for his victims.
Many say he should be forced to work at McDonalds, clean toilets or pick up garbage—which, well, gives a bad name to the hard-working people who do those jobs!
And, yes, many of you wish death—or worse—on him.
Here are some of the more creative entries. I'll continue to take submissions through the end of the court session tomorrow, then I'll put up a few of the most creative for a vote. The winner receives Bernie Madoff toilet paper.
David M. was among those suggesting this unusual sentence: "He must live out the remainder of his life as the nanny for 'the octuplet mom'."
Nico D: "Madoff should be forced to work at the DMV for the rest of his life...we all know how miserable it is there."
Tinman:"Ten minutes alone in a room with the investors he cheated."
Many of you suggested reality TV shows, like this one from Larry in Portland: "I think Bernie should be fitted with a GPS ankle locator and a helmet cam that will broadcast his location 24/7 on the internet. Then release him somewhere in the Midwest with his AARP card and $16 cash. An online pool could sell tickets where people could guess the exact time and date of his demise with proceeds benefiting victims. Mark Burnett might even turn it into a reality show."
