Madoff on way to federal prison: U.S. official

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Admitted thief Bernard Madoff was moved from his New York jail cell on Monday and was traveling to federal prison, a U.S. prison official said.

Disgraced financier Madoff, who has spent the last four months in jail after pleading guilty to a worldwide fraud of as much as $65 billion, was sentenced to 150 years imprisonment by a judge on June 29.

"He is in transit to another facility," said Scott Sussman, a spokesman for the Manhattan Correctional Center next door to the courthouse where Madoff confessed to his crimes in front of defrauded investors.

CNBC television reported on Monday that Madoff was being transferred to a medium security prison in Butner, North Carolina that houses 3,400 inmates.

A spokeswoman at Butner was not available for comment. The Federal Bureau of Prisons web site says Butner is located in North Carolina near the Research Triangle area of Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill.

The Manhattan jail spokesman Sussman declined to provide further details, citing Federal Bureau of Prisons policy not to disclose the location of a prison until the convict had arrived.

Madoff's lawyer had asked that his client be incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York, a medium-security prison about 70 miles northwest of New York City, but the final decision is made by the prisons bureau.

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 find himself earning pennies a day sweeping floors, cleaning toilets or manning a stove in the prison kitchen.

(Reporting by Grant McCool; Editing Bernard Orr and Tim Dobbyn)