A prison term of 150 years for a 70-year-old man who studiously cultivates the appearance of that friendly neighbor or beloved uncle?

If the criminal happens to be Bernard Madoff, all well and good. Considering how many lives he has altered and wrecked with his crooked money schemes, he deserves being taken out of the social scene for the rest of his natural life. Some think there ought to be a death penalty prospect for someone engineering something like a $50 billion rip-off of a lot of trusting and well-intentioned people. That’s too strong, but certainly anyone with the decades-long record of money scamming should lose his privileges as a free citizen.

Madoff is a master con man. He not only euchred people into pouring millions into his Ponzi scheme, but he was recently trying to picture himself as a victim who was being forced to do terrible things like wear an ankle bracelet and stay confined to his $7 million New York apartment. Poor Bernie!

The man seems to have worked on expressions and attire to get people to feel sorry for him as he goes about his affairs in public. Some have actually bemoaned the fact that a “distinguished” 70-year-old man is being depicted as the crook he is.

His guilty plea ennobles Madoff not one bit, no matter how contrite he might try to be. That is simply a ploy to get his wife and family off the hook, making him look like the lone perpetrator of this financial disaster rather than being aided by his family. That way, they might be able to keep the many millions Madoff squirreled away while ripping off unsuspecting “clients,” who from the start were little more than patsies for his schemes.

Let’s shed no tears for Bernard Madoff. He’s a crook who has done irreparable harm to countless people. The least we can expect from our system of justice is for him to be locked up and denied the same privileges of other citizens — for the rest of his life with no chance for parole.