Brooklyn's Bernie Madoff" is facing up to 27 years in prison when he's sentenced Friday for running a Ponzi scheme out of a ramshackle Bay Ridge storefront.
Philip Barry was convicted last November of swindling hundreds of working class folks out of their life savings in a scam that spanned more than 30 years. The feds say it's the longest-running Ponzi scheme in U.S. history.
"Barry was -- and still is -- a master manipulator and liar," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in a sentencing memo.
The U.S. Probation Department has recommended to Judge Raymond Dearie a sentence of only 15 years in the hope that Barry, who would be in his mid-60s when he got out, could work to pay back some of the $24 million he swindled from his victims.
Defense lawyer Lisa Hoyes described her client as the opposite of Ponzi kingpin Madoff who lived in opulent style before his scheme unraveled.
"(Barry) lived in his parents' rent-controlled apartment, he never took a vacation ...he lived a frugal, lonely lifestyle and had no significant romantic relationships.," she wrote in court papers.
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