The feds categorically denied North Carolina TV reports that the convicted 71-year-old Ponzi crook was hurt in a jailhouse fight Friday.
U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said Madoff was transferred to a prison medical facility last week after suffering from hypertension and dizziness.
ABC11 Eyewitness News in Raleigh had reported that Madoff suffered facial fractures, broken ribs and a collapsed lung in a prisoner-on-prisoner attack .
The report said the con man was rushed to Duke University Hospital in Durham.
Madoff's lawyer Ira Lee Sorkin insisted there was no truth to the report.
"The Bureau of Prisons said that report was not accurate," Sorkin said. "Indeed, Mr. Madoff was treated for dizzy spells and high blood pressure. That's all I'm going to say."
A spokeswoman at Duke also said no one by the name of Bernard Madoff has been treated at the university hospital in the past week.
Madoff is doing time at the Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, N.C., where his fellow inmates include mob boss Carmine Persico and Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheik who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Sorkin said Madoff is expected to be returned to the medium-security prison once he is better.
The disgraced financier was sentenced in June to 150 years in prison for defrauding investors of $65 billion - the largest swindle in U.S. history.
The long-running scheme unraveled during the economic downturn when his clients tried to withdraw money Madoff could not produce.
Since pleading guilty to the scam, federal authorities have been trying to recoup some of the lost fortunes of the victims by auctioning off Madoff's property.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/12/24/2009-12-24_bernie_madoff_had_dizziness_high_blood_pressure.html#ixzz0ajYxnoQw
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