US marshals began the seizure of the luxury $7 million Manhattan penthouse belonging to fraudster Bernard Madoff and his wife. It was in this apartment that Madoff was held under house arrest before his eventual imprisonment and sentencing to 150 years in prison for a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.

The couple agreed with US prosecutors in the days before Madoff was sentenced to forfeit any claims to their assets, property and accounts and after Madoff pleaded guilty in March to orchestrating the biggest swindle in the history of Wall Street..

A spokesman for the US Marshals Service in New York confirmed it was the start of the process of taking over the apartment and its contents on Manhattan’s tony Upper East Side.

Under an agreement with prosecutors made public Friday night, Ruth Madoff, 68, agreed to forfeit any claims to $80 million in assets and was left with $2.5 million in cash.

The deal includes the $7 million apartment, an $11 million house in Palm Beach, Florida and a $3 million residence on New York's Long Island.

The agreement, however, does not rule out future criminal charges or civil charges by regulators.

US District Judge Denny Chin handed Bernard Madoff, 71, a sentence of 150 years imprisonment on Monday. He was also ordered to forfeit claims to $170 billion, the amount US prosecutors said flowed through the principal Madoff account over the decades.

The figure is symbolic because he is not believed to possess anywhere near that much in money or assets.

Because of the length of Madoff’s sentence, he will not qualify to serve his time in a “Club Fed”-style minimum-security prison camp with no perimeter fence. The judge recommended that he be assigned to a prison in the north east of the United States. He is likely to be assigned to a low or medium-security institution such as Otisville, New York; Fort Dix, New Jersey; or Allenwood, Pennsylvania.

This week, Mrs Madoff broke her silence after the verdict. “I am embarrassed and ashamed. Like everyone else, I feel betrayed and confused,” she said. “The man who committed this horrible fraud is not the man whom I have known for all these years.”

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