BOSTON -- Bernard Madoff stole from thousands of investors, from big-name celebrities to charitable organizations to the Average Joe.

On Monday, the man who admitted to the biggest financial scam in U.S. history drew the stiffest sentence the law allows -- 150 years. In court, Madoff also came face-to-face with some of his victims for the first time.

There were also many victims in the Bay State. George Christin said before his father-in-law, Arthur Schwartz, died, he invested his life's savings with Madoff. Now, his family has nothing.

"About $2.5 million -- which was enough for her to live her life comfortably and to leave something for her three daughters, which is what my father-in-law lived his whole life to do," Christin said.

Christian said his wife now has no inheritance, and his mother-in-law, Marilyn, is barely able to keep her home in Florida.

Secretary of State William Galvin said that there are nearly 500 Massachusetts victims like Marilyn Schwartz, who believed in Madoff and trusted him.

"Right now, the most important thing is to locate assets and to try to make people as whole as possible," Galvin said.

"Being a first-generation immigrant Russian Jew, he believed that the word of another Jew was golden. He couldn't possibly have believed if he were alive today that Bernard Madoff would have done this to his own community. That would have absolutely devastated him," Christin said.

Madoff did devastate hundreds of investors who are now wiped out. Galvin said he is aggressively following the money trail and has filed suit against two companies involved in the Ponzi scheme.

Another victim in the scheme is the Massachusetts Pension Fund, which lost $12 million. Galvin said everyone has to do what's called "due diligence" when investing and that the government has to do much more to police the industry.