Perhaps the most high profile scam was the Ponzi scheme that Bernie Madoff used to steal an estimated $18 billion from clients, including religious organizations. If reported investment gains were included in the tally, then the financial loss of the scam climbs to $65 billion. Madoff is currently serving a 150 year prison sentence and is said to have boasted to fellow prisoners about the size of his investment scam.

Casual observers of the U.S. judicial system often opine that white collar criminals receive preferential treatment and often avoid jail. Some may even claim that Madoff’s punishment is an exception due to the massive size of the scam. Yet, prison time isn’t unusual for corrupt advisors, including advisors who have conducted much smaller scams.

Just recently, Bryan C. Binkholder of Wentzville, Illinois, was sentenced to nine years in the slammer for scamming $3.6 million from clients. Ironically, his website includes a picture of him presenting a financial seminar while standing alongside a poster that says “What you See is What You Get.”

In addition to seminars, Binkholder ran a youtube channel and was a guest on radio shows to earn investors’ confidence. However, he used clients’ assets to pay for his own expenses and to honor redemption requests.

Binkholder isn’t alone. In February, James Tagliaferri, formerly of TAG Virgin Islands, was sentenced in a Manhattan court to six years in prison for a scheme that cost his clients $16 million. He was caught using clients’ money to pay other clients and he failed to disclose compensation that he received for steering clients’ assets into certain investments.

Earlier in the year, a cherry picking scam sent advisor Noah Myers of Lyme, Conn., to jail for a 40-month prison sentence. Myers waited to allocate trades until the end of each day so that he could allocate the best performing securities to his account and the accounts of favored clients. In addition to jail time, he was ordered to pay $462,022 in disgorgement, $26,096 in prejudgment interest, and $300,000 as a civil penalty.

Casual observers also believe low- and medium-security prisons for white collar criminals are cushy, or like country clubs. Yet, that is also a myth. Madoff is serving time at the Federal prison in Butner, N.C., where inmates are forced to get out of bed by 6 a.m. each morning and face penalties for oversleeping.

Guards can wake prisoners at any time—such as 3 a.m.— to conduct a prisoner count. Visiting hours, furthermore, are limited and prisoners are prohibited from making physical contact with guests. Every minute of a prisoner’s life is dictated by prison guards, underscoring the loss of freedom that convicted criminals face.

The reasons for advisors going astray, however, are not uniform. In many cases, it appears that hardships push advisors over the edge. That was the case with Joel William Carlson of Vadnais Heights, Minnesota, who is serving a 3.5 year prison sentence for tax evasion. He didn’t pay taxes on legitimate earnings as well as on $1.5 million that he stole from clients.

He maintained that he stole from clients because he was desperate to maintain his lifestyle and that he planned to reimburse clients once his practice became profitable. Perhaps an even more common reason for advisors to steal involves the need to cover up poor performance or to factiously inflate investment returns with Ponzi schemes or similar scams.

Perhaps conducting such scams is easier than admitting to clients that investments have lost value. Madoff’s scam, of course, was a notorious Ponzi scheme that allowed him to make payments to certain clients even though his investments were losing value.

In a similar manner, Binkholder stole from clients so that he could honor redemption requests from other clients. In many cases, the corruption occurs after investments suffer catastrophic losses. Such was the case with Jason Konior, who conducted a Ponzi scam and was sentenced last summer to four years in prison and ordered to reimburse clients $2.9 million. He started the scam after his hedge fund, the Absolute Fund LP, lost $2.7 million in 2006

While stealing from clients is a terrible crime, many advisors have taken their deception a step further by stealing from friends, family members, and non-profit organizations. Victims of Carlson’s theft included his father, while Wright stole from childhood friends. Madoff’s far reaching scam is also well known for having stolen assets from non-profit groups, including churches.