For Madoff, prison offers a measure of relief. A man—and even a monster—who has put his greatest fear in the past is, in some way, a happier man, no matter what else has occurred. “What was before the fear of this”—getting caught—“eventually happening, that was over because it was over,” Madoff said. And with that worry behind him, Madoff moved on to others—“I was always a worrywart,” he said. He worries about his family, of course, and he worries about his victims, though he’s confident they will be okay. Most of his victims, he says, will get a substantial amount of their money back—he’s met with the trustee’s lawyers and tried to help lead them to the money. “It’s 50 cents on the dollar,” he told me. “These people probably would’ve lost all that money in the market. I’m not trying to justify what I did for one minute. I’m not.”

He’s come to terms with his crime, his pariah status. “It is what it is,” said Madoff.

He sees himself at this stage as a kind of truth-teller. He has disdain not only for the industry but for the regulators. “The SEC,” he says, “looks terrible in this thing.” And he doesn’t see himself as the only guilty party on Wall Street. “It’s unbelievable, Goldman … no one has any criminal convictions. The whole new regulatory reform is a joke. The whole government is a Ponzi scheme.”