The 71-year-old financier whose greed wiped out fortunes, ruined retirements, bankrupted Jewish charities and led some investors to commit suicide, was sentenced to 150 years in jail.

It probably makes certain his wife Ruth will never see him again outside of prison.

But Ruth, who has started using her maiden name of Ruth Alpern, is beginning a sentence of her own, shunned and ostracised wherever she turns.

The 68-year-old, who married her high school sweetheart Bernie in 1959, is shopping for a New York apartment - but landlords don't want to rent to her, reports the New York Post.

"She has nowhere to go," a top broker said. "No one wants someone with her name in their building. People like their privacy."

Her florist and favourite high-end eateries on the Upper East Side have shunned her.

Even her hairdresser, Pierre Michel, on Manhattan's tony Upper East Side, has told her not to return for her six-weekly blonde foil highlights, the newspaper reported.

Although not accused of doing anything wrong, Ruth was ordered to surrender her passport and must forfeit all assets except $2.5 million.

She said through her lawyer: "I am breaking my silence now because my reluctance to speak has been interpreted as indifference or lack of sympathy for the victims of my husband Bernie's crime, which is exactly the opposite of the truth."

Prosecutors say her husband's multi-billion dollar pyramid scheme caused untold misery while bankrolling an extravagant lifestyle for his family.

But a judge's forfeiture order has stripped her of $80 million in assets, including her penthouse apartment. That's left her with $2.5 million that couldn't be linked to the fraud.

Her husband told the court on Monday: "She cries herself to sleep every night knowing of all the pain and suffering I have caused, and I am tormented by that as well."

Ruth Madoff, though not at the courthouse, later expressed her own sympathy for the victims.

"Many of my husband's investors were my close friends and family," she said. "And in the days since December, I have read with immense pain the wrenching stories of people whose life savings have evaporated because of his crime.

"I am embarrassed and ashamed. Like everyone else, I feel betrayed and confused. The man who committed this horrible fraud is not the man whom I have known for all these years."

But victims of the Madoff scheme were unforgiving.

"I was introduced to Bernard Madoff 21 years ago at a business meeting," said Sheryl Weinstein. "I now view that day as perhaps the unluckiest day of my life.He walks among us, he dresses like us, but underneath the facade is a true beast."

Another who was robbed, Miriam Siegman, said: "Forgiveness for now will have to come from someone other than me."