Report: Ex-Goldman banker Roger Ng seeks to serve 10-year 1MDB sentence in ‘Orange is the New Black’ prison

KUALA LUMPUR, March 22 — Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc banker Roger Ng is reportedly seeking to spend his 10-year jail term for his role in the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal in the low-security US federal facility that served as the inspiration for the women’s prison in Netflix’s Orange is the New Black.

According to a report by Bloomberg, Ng’s lawyer Marc Agnifilo wrote to US District Judge Margo Brodie asking that she recommend the “lowest-possible designation” in the facility for male and female inmates located in the city of Danbury in Connecticut for his client.

In the letter, Agnifilo argued that Ng requires mental health treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder following his six-month stint in a Malaysian prison while awaiting extradition to the US for trial.

The Federal Correctional Institution, Danbury is known as a “celebrity” prison because it has housed personalities such as entrepreneur Leona Helmsley who was jailed for tax evasion in the early 1990s, as well as The Real Housewives of New Jersey star Teresa Giudice and singer Lauryn Hill of The Fugees.

Coincidentally, the trial of Hill’s former bandmate Pras Michél for his alleged role in the 1MDB scandal begins in the US Federal Court for the District of Columbia on March 27.

In June 2022, disgraced British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who was the former partner of financier Jeffrey Epstein, also asked to serve her 20-year sentence for sex trafficking in Danbury but was sent to a Florida prison instead.

In popular culture, Danbury has featured as a key plot point in TV series such as Weeds, The Blacklist and Suits.

On March 10, Ng was sentenced to a 10-year prison term after he was convicted of helping loot billions of dollars from the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund.

Last April, a jury in a federal court in the New York City borough of Brooklyn found Ng, Goldman’s former head of investment banking in Malaysia, guilty of helping his former boss Tim Leissner embezzle money from the fund, launder the proceeds and bribe government officials to win business.