Bernard Madoff recovering from heart attack, suffering from kidney disease

USPA News - Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff, who is serving a 150-year sentence for running Wall Street`s biggest ever investment fraud, was hospitalized after a heart attack last month and is suffering from advanced kidney disease, he told a reporter this week. Madoff, 75, was sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009 for orchestrating the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history, robbing investors of up to $65 billion over 20 years.

He told senior CNBC correspondent Scott Cohn this week that he had been hospitalized at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina last month after suffering a heart attack. "I had heard from Madoff in early December around the fifth anniversary of arrest. Then nothing until a few days ago when he e-mailed to say he was sorry he`d been out of touch, that he`d been in the Duke University Medical Center after suffering from a heart attack and kidney disease problems," Cohn said. The Federal Bureau of Prisons said Madoff had recently returned to the medium-security facility at Butner Federal Correctional Complex, which is located near the state capital Raleigh, but would not comment on Madoff`s illness or treatment. "We are well aware there are plenty of people, including most of his victims, that could not care less about his health," Cohn said on Wednesday. "In his latest e-mail, he says in addition to his heart problems, it is no secret that he has stage 4 kidney disease. That is a step away from kidney failure but we understand Madoff is not undergoing dialysis." Patients with stage 4 kidney disease have advanced kidney damage with a severe decrease in the glomerular filtration rate, causing waste products to build up in the blood and causing a condition known as uremia. In this stage, just a step away from the end stage, patients often develop complications such as high blood pressure, a shortage of red blood cells, bone disease, heart disease and other cardiovascular diseases.