Mystery of Madoff's rapid confession

Legal experts were flummoxed by the fraudster's willingness to admit every criminal charge laid before him, but was he trying to protect others who may have been implicated?

It was a brutally casual way to inform a man of his fate. After listening to a lengthy monologue by Bernard Madoff's defence lawyer on why the fraudster should remain on bail in his Manhattan penthouse, Judge Denny Chin waved away the prosecution.

"I don't need to hear from you because it is my intention to remand Mr Madoff," said the judge. He spoke almost as an aside, as if Madoff wasn't in the room.

There was a collective intake of breath. In the overflow room at New York's federal courthouse, full of hard-bitten hacks watching proceedings on a video link, a few people started clapping. The old man was finally going behind bars.

If the 70-year-old fraudster himself was surprised at being sent directly to jail, he didn't show it. He would have been warned by his defence team that he ran the risk of instant incarceration by pleading guilty to 11 counts of fraud, perjury and money laundering. More

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