UPDATE 3-Madoff's prison life begins in North Carolina

* Madoff checks into North Carolina prison

* Not the facility requested closer to New York home
(Adds details of prison and other inmates)

By Grant McCool

NEW YORK, July 14 (Reuters) - Bernard Madoff's prison life
began on Tuesday, a long way from the luxury homes, sleek
yachts and precious designer watches and clothes he
accumulated in the years he ran Wall Street's biggest
investment fraud.

Prison officials said the 71-year-old swindler checked into
the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina,
where two other well-known white collar criminals, a convicted
spy and a convicted bomb plotter are incarcerated.

The disgraced New York financier arrived on Tuesday morning
in a prison van after being moved from a jail cell in his home
city and then temporarily to a federal prison in Atlanta, a
prisons spokeswoman said.

Federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Linda Thomas
confirmed that the prison, 45 miles northwest of Raleigh, North
Carolina, was Madoff's final destination to serve the effective
life sentence he received on June 29 for bilking thousands of
investors from all walks of life.

A judge sentenced him to a total of 150 years on several
criminal charges, including securities fraud, money laundering
and perjury for a Ponzi scheme amounting to as much as $65
billion worldwide over about 20 years. A Ponzi scheme is one in
which early investors are paid with money from new clients.

Madoff has spent the last four months in the Manhattan
Correctional Center next door to the courthouse where he
pleaded guilty in March. He was arrested by the FBI in December
after confessing to his two sons that he was a fraud.

PRISON CLOTHES

At the 3,400-inmate prison, Madoff will wear prison-issued
clothing, initially be in isolation and then have a cell mate,
according to those who have served time in the U.S. system. He
will earn pennies a day doing menial work. [ID:nN29301447]

Other white-collar criminals at Butner are former Adelphia
Communications executives John Rigas, 84, due for release in
2018, and his 53-year-old son, Timothy, whose term ends in
2022, according to official records.

Jonathan Pollard, an American convicted of spying for
Israel, is also housed at the facility, which has several
levels of security. A blind Egyptian cleric, Omar Abdel-Rahman,
was moved to Butner two years ago after being sentenced to life
in 1995 for a plot to bomb New York landmarks and assassinate
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Once Madoff is settled into his new surroundings, his wife
of 45 years, Ruth, will be allowed to visit him. The prison is
an eight-hour drive from New York and it is not the one
requested by his lawyer.

He had asked Madoff be sent a medium-security prison in
Otisville, New York, about 70 miles northwest of New York City,
but the bureau of prisons decides where convicts go.

On July 2, Ruth Madoff gave up the couple's luxury $7
million Manhattan penthouse apartment and its valuable
contents, with proceeds eventually going to defrauded
investors. [ID:nN0297323]

Under an agreement with U.S. prosecutors, Ruth Madoff was
allowed to keep $2.5 million in cash, but she and her husband
were ordered to forfeit everything else they owned, including
other homes, yachts and jewelry.
(Reporting by Grant McCool; Editing by Derek Caney, Matt
Daily, Matthew Lewis and Steve Orlofsky)