For the skeptical, Bernard Madoff indeed has a heart. According to CNBC, the 75-year-old was returned to prison last month after having been hospitalized at Duke University Medical Center for a heart attack.

That’s not the end of the billionaire con artist’s health woes. Madoff is reportedly also at the fourth stage of kidney disease. He is not taking dialysis.

Madoff is only five years into a 150-year-sentence, given to him over his running of what was determined to be the largest investment fraud scheme in American history. Despite heading a Ponzi scheme that devastated hundreds of people, the convicted Madoff continues to tout a narrative of being a sacrificial lamb.

Madoff said in an email to CNBC Senior Correspondent, Scott Cohn:

“From the day of my arrest I offered to assist in recovering the investment principal of my customers…it was my belief that it was more important to use the evidence I had to pressure the complicit parties to settle, rather than to use this information for a lesser prison sentence for myself. As remorseful as I am for the pain and suffering I have shamefully caused, I take some comfort in the fact that my assistance will in fact accomplish what I have originally claimed, that with my assistance all of my customers will recover their original investment principal.”

Despite his attempts to claim partial credit for efforts to refund money to his victims, it was made clear by court-appointed trustee Irving Picard, responsible for recovering Madoff’s assets and returning them to investors, that Madoff has in fact been no help.

The payout to his victims ranged from $1,784 to $526.9 million, which suggest that there is hope that the innocent people fooled by this criminal can finally begin to move on.

As for Madoff, regardless of his failing health, it’s unlikely he will avoid spending the rest of his natural life in prison.

Image via Wikimedia Commons