Blame game's likely in jail for Madoff

Bernard Madoff may have to fight off prison inmates who want to squeeze him for money or blame him for the Wall St crash.

"Madoff isn't going to be real popular," said Larry Levine, who served 10 years' in federal prisons for securities fraud and narcotics trafficking and now advises convicts on surviving time behind bars.

"All the guys there will have wives or parents who are losing their homes or their jobs or who can't send money to them anymore. Everybody's going to be blaming Bernie."

After hunting down victims for decades, Madoff will now become a target, according to Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist at the David Geffen School of Medicine of University of California at Los Angeles.

"In the beginning, he will be besieged by mail that will be threatening and accusatory," said Dietz, who heads a consulting firm that participated in more than 12,000 criminal investigations, according to its website.

"There will be people trying to scam him and people who think he's hiding money," Dietz said.

"There will be inmates asking for money, and you don't want them to disbelieve you when you say you don't have it."

Madoff will likely join a corps of aging white-collar convicts including former WorldCom chief executive officer Bernard Ebbers, 67, and John Rigas, 84, the ex-CEO of Adelphia Communications.

Madoff probably would be assigned to a low- or medium- security facility, said Levine.

- BLOOMBERG