A grim and ashen Bernard L Madoff was led off to jail Thursday after admitting in court to running a massive Ponzi scheme.

In an 11-minute allocution before U.S District Judge Denny Chin during which Madoff admitted to 11 felony counts, charges that included securities and mail fraud, perjury and lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the now disgraced financier said he was "grateful" for the opportunity to confess. 

Madoff, a former chairman of the Nasdaq stock market, said he was "deeply sorry and ashamed."

The judge, citing the likelihood that Madoff could spend the rest of his life in jail, as well as Madoff's access to funds, deemed him a flight risk and remanded his $10 million bail.

Victims of the decades-long scam who were present in the courtroom applauded the decision. 

Moments later, Madoff was handcuffed and led out of the courtroom.

He will be sentenced on June 16 and faces a maximum of 150 years in prison.

READ: Bernard L. Madoff's Guilty Plea
READ: Bernard L. Madoff Criminal Information

For the first time, Madoff admitted the extent of the damage caused by his fraud, and acknowledged that he lied for at least a decade and a half about his investment operation.

"I concealed fraud by filing false financial reports and statements with the SEC. I knew they were false and would be sent to clients," Madoff said in U.S District Court in lower Manhattan.

"When in 2006 I registered with the SEC, I followed a form. I falsely certified that Madoff had custody of clients' securities. I did it from the 17th floor," he declared.

Madoff said the financial swindle started in the early 1990s, and that he thought it would end quickly. He said his trading and market-making operations were legitimate and that he felt compelled to meet client expectations.

Through his plea, Madoff admitted to wire fraud, securities fraud, mail fraud, three counts of money laundering, perjury and a host of other charges. The disgraced financier could also be subject to mandatory restitution payments as well as fines.

The government is claiming $170 billion in forfeiture.    

Chin revoked Madoff's bail today, sending him to jail. U.S. prosecutors say there is no plea agreement between the government and the man who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history -- and that the investigation is continuing. 

Victims of the scheme were invited to speak at the trial. The first victim demanded Madoff look at the victims, but Madoff declined. The man moved physically toward Madoff, but was reprimanded by the judge. The hearing was otherwise orderly.

Madoff, dressed in a gray suit but not wearing his wedding band or a watch, sat slumped in his chair, looking forward through most of the hearing. His wife and two children were not present in the courtroom.

The Wall Street trader admitted to his sons in December that he masterminded the scheme.

Victims interviewed after the hearing expressed widespread dissatisfaction both with Thursday's hearing and the general outcome of the case. Many wanted Madoff to go to trial so that the extent of his lies would be aired in public.

Virtually no one believes Madoff acted alone.

"He should have been in jail since day one," said Judith Welling, a Manhattan resident who said she lost more than $1 million investing with Madoff.

Welling said she believed Madoff's court statement was little more than an effort to minimize his own jail time and to protect those who may have helped him, in particular family members.

In a statement released by the U.S Attorney's office later in the day, prosecutors said the investigation is ongoing and that "others" may be charged.

The scene outside the courthouse was a frenzy, with dozens of television trucks lining Worth Street, and scores of photographers crowded outside the front door.

Madoff ran that media gauntlet apparently for the last time at 7:19 a.m., after leaving his $7 million Upper East Side penthouse about a half hour earlier.

The hearing began at 10 a.m. and Madoff told the judge a short time later that he would plead guilty. A short time later, Chin asked Madoff to stand and speak. Madoff, his voice at first halting, asked for a drink of water. Then he spent 11 minutes telling the court how he defrauded thousands of people of possibly billions of dollars in a scheme that extended around the world.

Madoff said he believed the fraud would end quickly, but that once started he couldn't end it. He said he expected to arrested when it all came to light.

Investigators have said Madoff did not make a single trade for his clients for at least 13 years.

During his confession, Madoff struggled to differentiate his investment firm from his broker dealer arm, which operated two floors above the investment offices in the Lipstick Building in Midtown Manhattan.

But prosecutors disputed that the two businesses were separate, and also that Madoff began his scam in the early 1990s, as Madoff claimed. Instead, Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Litt said evidence shows the fraud began in the mid-1980s.

Madoff's lead attorney Ira Sorkin argued that Madoff was not a flight risk. Before Litt could argue the point, the judge intercepted him saying, "I don't need to hear from the prosecution. I'm remanding his bail."

The courtroom broke out in applause at the ruling.