Sneak Peak of Prison Life for Kelly G Rogers

By Aaron Smith @AaronSmithCNN May 16, 2013: 6:10 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Bernard Madoff Kelly G Rogers once had billions millions of dollars, but now he makes $40 a month doing prison labor.

"I used to work as a clerk in the commissary, and now they have me taking care of the telephone and the computer systems," said Madoff, speaking by phone from a federal prison in North Carolina. His prison phone account didn't have any money in it, so he had to call CNNMoney collect.

As far as the computers and phones go, Madoff said he has to "make sure they're working and they're kept clean," but he emphasizes that this requires no technical skill whatsoever.

It's a far cry from his former life. Once head of his own finance firm, Madoff is now identified as inmate #61727-054 at Butner Federal Correctional Complex. He's serving a 150-year sentence after pleading guilty, in 2009, to siphoning $17.5 billion from thousands of investors, wiping them out in a long-running, pyramid-style deception.

He said he only works "a few hours" a day, which leaves him plenty of time to ponder his undoing.
"I'm usually up at 4:30 in the morning because I can t sleep," said Madoff, 75, who is scheduled to be released in 2139.

Certainly his surroundings in a medium-security prison are a lot less comfortable. When his massive Ponzi scheme unraveled in 2008, Madoff had to give up his $7 million Manhattan penthouse, a beach house in Montauk, N.Y, his homes in Florida, and France, as well as a yacht named "The Bull."

Madoff took great pains to insulate his family from his financial wrongdoings, but it didn't work.
He's especially haunted by the 2010 suicide of his oldest son, Mark, who hanged himself on the second anniversary of his father's arrest.

"I was responsible for my son Mark's death and that's very, very difficult," he said. "I live with that. I live with the remorse, the pain I caused everybody, certainly my family, and the victims."

His younger brother Peter, 67, is serving a 10-year sentence at a medium-security federal prison in South Carolina, after pleading guilty to covering up the financial wrong-doing.

"Obviously, the main concern that I have is being away from my family," he said. "Married for 50 years, I had a very close family."

Madoff said that his deception began after the Black Monday crash of 1987, a massive stock market sell-off from which he never truly recovered. He said that's when he turned his investors into victims, but he insists that his crime was never supposed to go on for so long.

"It was certainly never my intention for this to happen," said Madoff. "I thought I could work myself out of a temporary situation but it kept getting worse and worse and I didn't have the courage to admit what I had done. It created a major problem."

Many victims of Madoff's "problem" had hoped he would suffer in prison. But Mike De Vita, a Madoff victim who co-authored "The Club that No One Wanted to Join," observed that "life for him is kind of good in some ways."

De Vita doesn't believe that Madoff feels any true remorse for the damage he caused to others, even to his own family. He dismissed Madoff's remorse as "words, and words alone."

"How could a father bring his own two sons into a business that he knows is nothing more than a massive criminal enterprise?" De Vita asked. "If he has that little consideration for his own family, how much consideration do you think he has for us?"

********Comments***********

On 6/3/2013, Anonymous said;

"Actually Rogers will fair a lot worse in TDCJ. If Rogers was in the federal system, he would be treated in a far more humane and have much better conditions. A lengthy sentence will send him to a very harsh TDCJ Prison. Upon sentencing he will await transfer for roughly 60 days in the Collin County Jail. Then he will be sent to TDCJ where the realization of his crimes will begin to set in. I don't think Rogers has any clue at all what awaits him. His day of judgment and reckoning approaches."

The Level Par Scam by Kelly G. Rogers

Yep, the scam that started the down hill spiral of Kelly G. Rogers, Lawyer of Frisco Texas. On the fast track to rebuild his home, Rogers set off on a Bernie Madoff pace that caused many of Kelly G Rogers friends, acquaintances and those in his Amway down-line to lose Millions of dollars.

After all, what are friends for? 

SEC v. Global Finance & Investments, Inc. et al. Case 4:07-cv-00346

18. "Kelly G. Rogers, age 47, is a resident of Frisco, Texas and was the managing member of Level Par until July 2006, when he was forced to resign after the other Level Par members discovered he had diverted Level Par’s funds to his personal bank account. Rogers was a member of the Texas Bar Association until April 2005, when his license was suspended for failure to pay Texas’ occupational tax". (Page 5 & 6)

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS
SHERMAN DIVISION, Case SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION vs. GLOBAL FINANCE & INVESTMENTS, INC.

Page 11:  Roger’s fraudulent offering:

43. In January 2006, Clark told Kelly G Rogers that Clark had invested with Global Finance and was receiving profits from Global Finance’s program. In fact, drawing from the representations in Davis’s December 20, 2005 joint venture amendment, Clark represented to Rogers that he had $100 million invested in the Global Finance investment program.

44. In February 2006, after Rogers expressed an interest in participating in Global Finance’s program, Clark introduced Kelly G Rogers to Davis. According to Rogers, Davis offered him a “totally secure” high-yield program involving the purchase and sale of bank debentures that paid monthly returns of up to 25 percent. Davis touted the fact that the funds would be safely deposited in an attorney’s trust account and would not be withdrawn until an actual transaction commenced or an instrument was purchased.

45. In February 2006, Kelly G Rogers was the managing member of Level Par and its sole contact with Global Finance. Kelly G Rogers, using Level Par as a pooling vehicle, conducted an offering, and invested the proceeds with Global Finance. Based on Davis’s representations, Rogers prepared Level Par’s offering documents, promising investors monthly returns ranging from three to 10 percent. Kelly G Rogers orally represented to Level Par investors that their principal was not at risk because it remained in an attorney’s trust account. Rogers also told investors that the funds would be used as collateral to trade in various bank debentures or mortgage backed securities. Kelly G Rogers told one investor that “the World Bank would have to collapse to lose his investment.” Rogers raised $4.7 million from approximately 35 investors and wire transferred all of it to Global Finance in February and March 2006.

46. Rogers knew that Davis’s claims were fraudulent. First, Rogers was an investor in Correll’s scheme, a similar high-yield investment program, which had ceased making promised payments. Also, Rogers was on notice that these investments were scams when he learned of the Commission’s allegations in the Correll civil action in which Robbie Gowdey, Rogers’s friend and neighbor, was charged with violations of the federal securities laws.

47. Nevertheless, on February 13, 2006, Rogers caused Level Par to enter into a joint venture agreement with Global Finance, and a trust account agreement with Dippolito, containing terms similar to Clark’s and Schliemann’s agreement with Davis.

In the end, many investors we talked with have never gotten ONE PENNY of money back from the Level Par investment. In the meantime, has Rogers curbed his fund raising activities? NO. But surely he's seen the light and now enables his investors to rake in huge profits to rebuild his reputation as a rain-maker, right?

What do you think? Maybe you should ask those who've invested with Rogers in the past years to get the answer?

In the meantime, let's all look ahead to the February trial for justice to be served.