Sharpton calls for justice outside Madoff's home
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Saying Bernard Madoff enjoys a "gilded penthouse incarceration," civil rights activist Al Sharpton led a rally outside the accused swindler's Manhattan home on Saturday urging equal justice for the rich and poor.
Sharpton and about 30 other demonstrators protested that Madoff was being allowed to remain free pending trial while poor people with no access to top legal representation languished in prison for relatively minor infractions.
"There must be one standard for all, and not one based on income," Sharpton said at the protest on Manhattan's affluent Upper East Side.
He added that Madoff was experiencing "a kind of gilded penthouse incarceration."
Madoff, 70, was arrested on December 11 in connection with what authorities have described as the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. In a Ponzi scheme, early investors are paid with money from new investors.
According to prosecutors, Madoff has confessed that his money management business was "one big lie" and had racked up losses of as much as $50 billion.
Madoff is under house arrest and 24-hour surveillance in his penthouse apartment as a condition of his $10 million bail agreement.
It was not known if he was home during the rally.
