Illness delayed jury deliberations for a third day Thursday in the fraud trial of five former Bernard Madoff employees, deepening a legal dilemma for prosecutors and defense lawyers. Both sides planned to hold a late-morning conference with U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain after a member of the nine-woman-three-man panel again was too sick to rejoin the panel and restart stalled deliberations. More on USA Today [...]
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Like Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme itself, the trial of five of his former aides has been virtually unprecedented in its scope. A federal jury of 12 men and women on Monday began deciding whether the defendants are guilty of aiding in Madoff’s massive fraud. More on Reuters [...] Odds are, you’ve heard of Bernard Madoff. The once-storied investment manager enjoyed an illustrious career on Wall Street, even serving as the chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange at one point, before his arrest in December 2008 for operating the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Madoff’s victims collectively lost nearly $20 billion, and Madoff is currently serving a 150-year prison term with an expected release date of 2139. While Madoff is undeniably the modern-day face of the Ponzi scheme, many are unaware that the carnage inflicted by his scheme was hardly a one-time event. Unfortunately, the reality is that, while Madoff’s scheme ushered the term “Ponzi scheme” into the mainstream vocabulary (The Associated Press crowned 2009 as “The Year of the Ponzi Scheme”), the true toll of Ponzi schemes is much greater. More in Forbes [...] Jurors began deliberating Monday over the fate of five former employees of Bernard L. Madoff’s securities firm accused of aiding and covering up the decadeslong fraud. Prosecutors have alleged the five defendants did everything from create computer programs that generated fake documents to lie to regulators and auditors to help perpetuate the fraud. More in the Wall Street Journal [...] The expected start of jury deliberations in the fraud trial of five former Bernard Madoff employees has been delayed amid legal objections over closing prosecution arguments in the case. Defense lawyers repeatedly objected Friday to what they characterized as incorrect government references to evidence in the trial of the defendants accused of participating in and profiting from the Madoff-led Ponzi scheme that stole an estimated $20 billion from thousands of investors. More in USA Today [...] After a five-month-long look at what the government learned about Bernard Madoff’s epic fraud, jurors are close to beginning to weigh whether five of his former employees were his conspirators or his dupes. A Manhattan federal jury could start deliberating as soon as Friday in the first criminal trial to result from one of history’s biggest frauds. Closing arguments were expected to wrap up, followed by lengthy legal instructions and possibly some deliberations before the weekend. More on CBS MoneyWatch [...] The defense lawyer for former Bernard Madoff aide Annette Bongiorno displayed a familiar photo of the Ponzi scheme mastermind on courtroom video monitors Tuesday during his closing arguments in her fraud trial. That’s how Bongiorno viewed her boss before the world learned Madoff ran a scam that stole an estimated $20 billion from thousands of investors, said attorney Roland Riopelle. Then he displayed a New York Magazine image that depicted Madoff as the malevolent Joker character from a recent Batman movie. More on USA Today [...] Wall Street’s industry-funded watchdog has asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to approve a measure that would require stockbrokers to tell clients about bonuses they receive when they switch firms, according to a regulatory filing. Defense lawyers in the fraud trial of five former Bernard Madoff employees argued Monday that federal prosecutors erroneously accused the onetime co-workers of knowingly joining their boss’ Ponzi scheme to satisfy greed. That legal version of events has been fatally undermined by reliance on star prosecution witness Frank DiPascali, the self-confessed Madoff henchman who testified he repeatedly lied to the defendants to get them to do work needed to operate the scam, the lawyers argued in closing trial statements. More on USA Today [...] As the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seeks to become a more formidable force in the courtroom, a string of trial defeats in the past six months has exposed a weak spot: witness testimony. In four of the five trials that the securities regulator recently lost, the jury or judge were not convinced by the witnesses brought in by SEC litigators, according to court transcripts, rulings and interviews with defense lawyers. More on Reuters [...] |
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