That's what fifty billion buys you

The New York Times has an article by Alex Berenson and Diana Henriques about Madoff's detention:

Bernard Madoff, the financier accused of one of the biggest frauds in Wall Street history, will remain out on bail, but will be placed under home detention and electronic monitoring, a federal judge ordered on Wednesday. Federal District Judge Gabriel Gorenstein also ordered that Mr. Madoff’s wife, Ruth, surrender her passport by noon on Thursday. In the order, the judge also modified the bail so that Mr. Madoff would not need two additional signatures to guarantee the bond, as initially required. Only his wife and his brother Peter, who worked at Mr. Madoff’s firm, had signed the guarantee as of Wednesday morning. His two sons, Mark and Andrew, had refused to sign, according to court papers. Under the new bail package, Mr. Madoff and his wife agreed to surrender their houses in Montauk, New York and Palm Beach, Florida if he flees, in exchange for reducing the number of co-signers on his bail from four to two. He also agreed to a curfew of 7 p.m. through 9 a.m. “In light of this order and the agreement of both the defendant and the government to the changes in the bail conditions, there is no need for a further hearing on bail today,” the judge’s written order said. “Accordingly, the hearing is canceled.”
Meanwhile, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said in a statement that he had recused himself from the case because his son Marc Mukasey, a lawyer with Bracewell and & Giuliani in New York, is representing Frank DiPascali, who is suspected to have aided Mr. Madoff in his $50 billion fraud.
The Securities and Exchange Commission offered a mea culpa, saying that that it had missed repeated opportunities to discover what may be the largest financial fraud in history, a Ponzi scheme whose losses could run as high as $50 billion.

Rico says it just keeps getting better...