Bernard Madoff's prison life began on Tuesday, a far cry from his life of luxurious apartments and yachts he accrued while running Wall Street's biggest investment fraud.

Federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Linda Thomas confirmed the disgraced financier arrived Tuesday morning at a medium security prison in Butner, North Carolina, which houses 3,400 inmates.

She said it was Madoff's final destination after being moved from a jail cell in New York and then temporarily to a federal prison in Atlanta.

He was sentenced on June 29 to a total of 150 years on several criminal charges, including securities fraud, money laundering and perjury for a Ponzi scheme amounting to as much as $65 billion worldwide. A Ponzi scheme is one in which early investors are paid with money from new clients.

CNBC TV showed footage of a prison van arriving at Butner and said it was carrying Madoff. The prison is near the area known as the Research Triangle of Durham, Raleigh and Chapel Hill.

Madoff has spent the last four months in the Manhattan Correctional Center next door to the courthouse where he pleaded guilty in March.

Other white-collar criminals at the prison are former Adelphia executives John Rigas, 84, due for release in 2018, and his 53-year-old son Timothy whose term ends in 2022, according to official records.

Madoff's lawyer had asked that his client be incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York, a medium-security prison about 70 miles northwest of New York City, but the final decision is made by the prisons bureau.

(Reporting by Grant McCool, editing by Derek Caney, Matt Daily and Matthew Lewis)