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'I really don't pay much attention to him': Destin Madoff victim ignores sentencing, says he has 'moved on'
A Destin developer, who was among the thousands swindled by Bernard Madoff, said Monday that he wasn’t even aware of the Wall Street financier’s life sentence.
“I really don’t pay much attention to him anymore, so I guess it’s a no comment,” Tom Becnel said from Aspen, Colo. “I really don’t have any thoughts on him. I’ve moved on and don’t really linger on past events. I have too much in the future to worry about.”
To read more about Becnel’s brush with Madoff and his losses, click here.
A federal judge rejected Bernard Madoff's plea for leniency Monday, sentencing the 71-year-old swindler to spend the rest of his life in prison for an "extraordinarily evil" fraud that took a "staggering toll" on thousands of victims.
U.S. District Judge Denny Chin cited the unprecedented nature of the multibillion-dollar fraud as he sentenced Madoff to the maximum of 150 years in prison, a term comparable only to those given in the past to terrorists, traitors and the most violent criminals. There is no parole in federal prison so Madoff will most likely die there.
Becnel, the developer of Destin landmarks like Silver Shells and the Palms, never met the now infamous New York trader but spoke to him over the phone.
“A friend of mine from Aspen recommended him and had been with him three years,” Becnel said. “I talked to Bernie, did due diligence, looked at his credentials, had a banker look at him and the outcome was the same ... this guy looks like he is just a winner.”
Instead he wound up in the same boat as more than 13,000 others on Madoff’s client list, which included big names like actors John Malkovich, Kevin Bacon and Dodgers great Sandy Koufax.
In a March article in The Log, Becnel did not say how much he lost at the hands of Madoff but he did say that the losses were categorized as theft, which means the investment is covered by insurance. He said he expects to get 35 percent of his total investment back plus $1 million from insurance.
