It was the first global Ponzi scheme — a slow-motion crime wave that began in the Manhattan offices of a stockbroker named Bernard L. Madoff, spread to wealthy enclaves in Palm Beach, Fla., and Southern California, and reached as far as the Persian Gulf. It carried a breathtaking price: $64.8 billion in paper wealth and at least $17.5 billion in cash losses. Those affected ranged from carpenter-union pensioners to French aristocrats. Early on Dec. 11, 2008, Mr. Madoff was arrested at his Manhattan penthouse. Within hours, the news reached his investors, leaving them stunned. In doctors’ offices, beauty salons, executive suites and living rooms they learned that all the money they thought was in their accounts — invested through a trusted Wall Street statesman — had vanished. More in the New York Times [...]

For many Americans, Christmas-to-New Year’s week is a time for family and friends. For Bernard Madoff finance director Frank DiPascali, it was time to add phony trading gains or losses to year-end account reports for his Ponzi scheme boss’s investment clients and workers. Testifying Thursday in the conspiracy and fraud trial of five former Madoff co-workers, DiPascali said he performed the year-end financial sleight-of-hand for approximately 15 years. Beneficiaries included Ed and Richard Glantz, Steven Mendelow and Joel Levy — large investment clients who DiPascali said Madoff had guaranteed 17% annual gains, plus large bonus payments. More on USA Today [...]

Bernard Madoff’s deputies made fake paperwork showing trading losses to save $1.7 million owed to an investor who died with “too much money” in his account even as the firm was being flooded with new customers and cash in the 1990s, the con man’s former finance chief told a jury. While Madoff usually backdated trades to diminish payouts to the estates of clients who died, he couldn’t do that for Jacques Amsellem, a French customer since the late 1970s, because the man’s lawyer didn’t alert the firm to the death until two months later, Frank DiPascali, 57, testified yesterday at the federal trial of five former colleagues in Manhattan. More on Bloomberg [...]

Until this week, relatively little was known publicly about Frank DiPascali, the former finance chief for Ponzi scheme architect Bernard Madoff. But testifying as the star prosecution witness against five former co-workers as the fifth anniversary of the scam’s collapse approaches, DiPascali, 57, has started filling in some of the blanks in his college dropout-to-financial-world-millionaire background. More in USA Today [...]

Bernard Madoff’s finance chief, who pleaded guilty to aiding his $17 billion fraud, said he could tell right away that fake trades were being used in customer accounts in 1975 when he joined the firm after high school. The fraudulent trading went on “for as long as I could remember,” Frank DiPascali, 57, told a jury in Manhattan federal court today at the trial of five former colleagues. “It was virtually impossible not to know what was happening.” More on Bloomberg [...]

A top lieutenant to Bernard L. Madoff explained in detailed, often colorful testimony the lengths required to maintain the firm’s massive Ponzi scheme, including one incident in which the staff put fake trading records into a refrigerator so an auditor wouldn’t be able to tell they were still warm from having just been printed. In his first day on the stand, Frank DiPascali Jr., 57 years old, described that madcap day about two decades ago when an auditor demanded to see daily trading logs. More in the Wall Street Journal [...]

The ex-finance chief for disgraced Ponzi scheme architect Bernard Madoff is expected to take the witness stand Monday and testify against five former co-workers accused of participating in the infamous fraud. Frank DiPascali, 57, is expected to provide an insider description of the scam and the roles the five allegedly played in helping Madoff steal more than $17 billion from thousands of charities, celebrities, ordinary investors, financial firms and other entities. More in USA Today [...]