Financial scammer of epic proportions Bernie Madoff may be getting ready to plead guilty to his crimes. It looks like he's cutting a deal.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a Bernie Madoff plea deal may be in the works. Prosecutors filed a notice this morning that they will file a new criminal information against him if he decides to waive indictment. "Often, new criminal informations are filed in connection with a plea deal, but not always." [WSJ]

That $50 billion that Bernie Madoff allegedly stole from investors? Yea, well, it seems he lied about that, too. Although it was Madoff who provided the figure to the authorities after he was arrested, "it is becoming increasingly clear that the number may be as fictitious as the sprawling fraud that he allegedly ran." No one seems to know what the real number is yet, but "some believe it's less than $20 billion." [AP]

So everyone knows that the art world's in the doldrums, that even deep-pocketed collectors are holding off buying, and that the only reason people even show up to art openings anymore is to quaff the free champagne. But you'd think that a seven foot-wide portrait of a smirking Bernie Madoff, priced at a mere $100,000, would have some takers, right? Strangely not: Disappointingly for the artist Yan Pei-Ming, his masterpiece, on sale at the Armory Show which kicked off yesterday at the West Side Piers, has so far attracted no interest.

Here you see a photo of swindler Bernie Madoff partying down on a recent New Year' eve. Partying down to hell, ha. In non-party hat Madoff news: is his wife delusional, or just greedy?

If you've been following the Bernie Madoff affair and you don't have much to do today, Vanity Fair's 13,000-word article on the disgraced money manager, which appears in the April issue, is now online. It's a bit long, yes, but it's full of all sorts of lurid details (and a few fun photos, too, like the one on the left.) Oh, and in case you've been in suspense, Bernie's fave meal at his fave restaurant, Primola, consisted of a "small salad, chicken scarpiello and Diet Coke or red wine." Good to know! [VF]

• Merrill Lynch's top 10 earners in 2008—a list that Andrew Cuomo will be interested to take a look at—is out. Each made more than $10 million in cash and stock in 2008 as the bank racked up losses of $27.6 billion. [WSJ]
• The private sector lost nearly 700,000 jobs in February. [CNN]
• A UBS exec will address the Swiss bank scandal on Capitol Hill today. [NYT]
• Ben Bernanke yesterday: "If there is a single episode in this entire 18 months that has made me more angry, I can't think of one other than AIG." [BN]
• Bill Ackman's hedge fund dropped in February, Ken Griffin gained. [BN, NYP]
• More than 8.3 million mortgages are underwater, according to a report. [BN]
• Bernie Madoff has agreed to give up rights to his investment firm and company art collection. A hearing scheduled for today to look into conflicts of interest on the part of his lawyer, Ira Sorkin, has been postponed. [AP]

Now that Liz Smith has been put out to stud, we need to reevaluate our idea of "gossip." (Probably needed to do this anyway). Who's worth gossiping about anymore? Well, not Paris Hilton.

"Lawyers for accused swindler Bernard Madoff say a Manhattan apartment and $62 million in accounts held by his wife are unrelated to the investment manager's purported fraud, according to court documents." [NYP]

Vicky Ward's article on the Noel family from the April issue of Vanity Fair is now online. Don't expect the piece to change your impressions of disgraced hedge fund manager Walter, his wife Monica, or his five daughters and sons-in-law. (Former friends and neighbors describe the family as "irritating," "shameless," and "outlandish," among other things.) And you won't find the Noels to be any closer to figuring out that they've become personas non grata. The couple continue to turn up at parties—even though no one wants to be seen with them—and they keep "a folder of supportive letters from friends" which they pull out when visitors stop by their Greenwich home. Daughter Marisa Noel Brown seems to be adjusting a bit better, though! As she tells friends, "I've been poor before. I can be poor again." [VF]

Sure, it's not quite as bold as stealing the statue next to his pool or wrapping his home in toilet paper, but lest you think residents of Palm Beach have forgotten about Bernie Madoff, well, they clearly haven't. [Page2Live]

Elie Wiesel, author, survivor, voice of morality, expert on evil, has found someone he'd like locked up and tortured for crimes against humanity: Bernie Madoff, who took all his money.

• The Treasury Department announced a plan to save Citigroup from near-certain doom. The government will take a 36 percent stake in the company, three-quarters of the bank's shareholders will be wiped out, and the board will be overhauled. Vikram Pandit? He keeps his job. [WSJ, BN, NYT]
• New GDP figures indicate "the U.S. recession deepened a lot more in late 2008 than first reported." The figures haven't been this bad since '82. [WSJ]
• Stocks tumbled this morning on the Citigroup and GDP news. [BN]
• Andrew Cuomo has subpoenaed Bank of America seeking the names of the Merrill execs who received $3.6 billion in bonuses. This comes after BofA CEO Ken Lewis failed to provide the details during his deposition yesterday. [DB]
• A "mutiny is brewing" within UBS's investment banking unit following the ouster of the bank's CEO, Marcel Rohner. [NYP]
• Blackstone reported a fourth-quarter loss of $827.1 million. [BN]
• Bernie Madoff moved $164 million from London to New York in the weeks before he was busted, according to new court documents. [NYP]
• Scammer Sam Israel has moved from a prison hospital back to prison. [AP]

You know how when all the water finally evaporates from your dirty, clogged sink, you get to see how many roaches were really drowned in there? That's how Wall Street is now, with frauds!

"Cozy" is not the same as "together." But we can still wonder why Owen Wilson is sitting next to Kate Hudson, or if Alex Rodriguez is again flirting with Madonna via the idea of being her neighbor.

The latest issue of New York has taken a look inside the mind of Bernie Madoff and come up empty. What launched him on the path to a $50 billion Ponzi scheme remains a puzzle.

A couple of weeks ago, there was talk that Bernie Madoff's penthouse on East 64th Street could sell for as much as $8 million when it hits the market. (It's not officially up for grabs yet, although several brokers have been asked to assess its value in anticipation of a sale.) It seems the $8 million figure, though, doesn't factor in the fact that prospective buyers would be purchasing it from the devil himself, even though the proceeds would go to victims of Madoff's alleged scheme.

A trustee overseeing the dissolution of Bernie Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme says the former Wall Street statesman, a pioneer of computerized trading, apparently hadn't purchased securities for customers in 13 years.

As if it wasn't bad enough that Bernie Madoff went and took millions from wealthy Jewish people in Palm Beach and then made it disappear, it seems some gentiles down there are happy about it!

Whatever it is Bernie Madoff's been up to the last 13 years, we now know one thing he wasn't doing was investing his clients' cash. Irving Picard, the trustee liquidating Madoff's investment firm, said today that he's found no evidence that Madoff purchased any securities on behalf of customers in "at least 13 years." He also said that he's received 2,350 claims so far, and that a handful of subpoenas have been issued, including one to "a hair salon called Blow Styling Salon located blocks away from Mr. Madoff's Manhattan penthouse apartment." Can't wait to hear about that one! [WSJ, NYT]