Fraud victim pleads life term for Madoff aide

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An investor who says he lost $8 million in the fraud of arch swindler Bernard Madoff pleaded with a judge to imprison Madoff's longtime aide Frank DiPascali for life and ignore government requests for leniency because of his cooperation with investigators.

"I ask that you do not give in to that pressure," the investor, Laurence Leif, wrote in a letter to Manhattan federal court Judge Richard Sullivan. "He was such an arrogant and rude man when he worked at Madoff's firm."

The letter, dated February 21 and made public on the court record Tuesday, said: "The information he has provided is 'after The Fact' and does us all no good."

In a December 14 letter made public last Friday, U.S. prosecutors praised the efforts of DiPascali in providing "substantial assistance to the government in its investigation and prosecution of others" in the Madoff case.

DiPascali, 53, worked with Madoff's firm in New York from 1975 until the swindler's arrest in December 2008.

DiPascali faces up to 125 years in prison after pleading guilty last August to 10 criminal charges admitting to his decades-long involvement in the multibillion-dollar investment fraud. The government letter said "it is likely his cooperation will result in an extraordinary letter" justifying a lower sentence.

Madoff is serving a 150-year prison sentence after he pleaded guilty last March to running the worldwide fraud of as much as $65 billion, bilking thousands of big and small investors, including charities and philanthropies.

"Please don't let him con you into thinking that he has helped anybody but himself," Leif wrote of DiPascali. "PLEASE give him the 125 years that the law allows. That is what he gave all of us by his actions that were over decades of time."

DiPascali's lawyer could not be reached for comment.

Leif has previously written to the judge over DiPascali's bail applications. DiPascali remains in custody almost two weeks after the judge reluctantly agreed to order his release into house arrest on a revised $10 million bail package.

A sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.

The case is U.S. v DiPascali, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 09-00764.

(Reporting by Grant McCool, editing by Matthew Lewis)