Well, this isn't exactly the world's greatest surprise Bernie Madoff has been sentenced to the full 150 years that the prosecutors were demanding.

It's not all that much of a surprise for Madoff had already pleaded guilty to running the world's largest ever financial scam. Some estimates put the losses at as much as $50 billion (although others point out that this entails double counting).

He was running a Ponzi scheme: promising high returns to investors but instead of paying these from profits he was simply paying old investors from new money flowing into the fund. Not a new game and not a clever one: but his was larger and longer running than any of the others.