The multibillion-dollar swindler Bernard Madoff will serve his time for Wall Street’s biggest fraud alongside an Israeli spy and an Islamic terrorist. Madoff, now Prisoner No 61727-054, was transferred yesterday to a prison in North Carolina, where he will serve his 150-year sentence for running a $65 billion pyramid scheme.

The US Bureau of Prisons rejected Madoff’s request to spend the rest of his life at the Otisville Correctional Institute, 77 miles from his home. Instead, the 71-year-old will be incarcerated at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex, which lies 480 miles from New York, where Madoff’s wife and two sons live — just within the Bureau of Prison’s 500-mile guideline for visits.

Madoff’s sons have cut off all contact with their father since he confessed to his fraud but a Madoff adviser says that the estrangement is “lawyer enforced” because of the continuing investigation. The fraudster hopes eventually to receive visits from his sons.

Butner comprises two mediumsecurity prisons and a low-security facility in the same place, which could make it easier for Madoff to transfer to a lower security jail in the future. Among the inmates at the complex is Jonathan Pollard, the former US navy officer convicted of spying for Israel in 1987, who is scheduled for release in 2015. Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind Egyptian sheikh jailed for life in 1995 for plotting a “day of terror” in New York, has been held there since 2007.

The Butner complex was named one of America’s ten cushiest prisons by Forbes magazine. The magazine noted, however, that it is “no Club Fed”. Federal prisons, sometimes dubbed Club Fed because of their easygoing rules and lack of a fence, are only for inmates serving less than ten years.

Butner does house other white-collar criminals, such as John Rigas, the founder of Adelphia Communications, and his son, Tim, the company’s chief financial officer, who were convicted of fraud. Franklin Brown, the former vice-chairman of Rite Aid Corp, is serving a ten-year sentence at Butner.

Madoff is likely to be held in solitary confinement, at least at the beginning of his sentence, because he is considered at risk of revenge attacks.

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