Bernard Madoff surprised the public on Tuesday when his lawyers told the court that he would be pleading guilty on Thursday to what could be the largest pyramid scheme in history.

The former NASDAQ chairman was arrested after telling his sons that he was at the helm of a $50 billion pyramid (a.k.a ponzi) scheme.  In court on Tuesday prosecutors saw his $50 billion and raised him $14.8 billion, for a total of and estimated $64.8 billion in fraud.  However, this lofty amount is suspect – some think that Madoff himself exaggerated the figures in a misguided attempt at self-importance.  Go big and go home… and by “home” we mean house arrest followed by the Big House.

While prosecutors and Madoff himself have estimated the Ponzi scheme at 11 figures, the authorities estimate that the actual loss was probably much lower.  Of course, the whole rub with a pyramid scheme is that a lot of the money doesn’t actually exist.  That being the case, many of the original estimated billions could be the imaginary earnings pitched to investors as a fairy tale.  Thus far about $1 billion has been found to dole out to the long, angry line of bamboozled investors.

And so we bestow upon Bernie Madoff a Fantasy T-Wearer award today, with the “guilty” T-shirt seen at right.  While there are of course a lot of Madoff T-shirts from which to choose, we chose this one for a reason: since Madoff fudged so many numbers over the years, it’s only fitting to imagine him proclaiming a number that would seem to be 100% correct.

UPDATE 2.12: The judge gave the Monopoly treatment to Madoff, who has now gone directly to jail without collecting $200.