The mercy shown by a judge this week to former aides of Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernard Madoff risks hindering justice for victims of his $17.5 billion fraud, and sets a dangerous precedent for white-collar prosecutions, a government lawyer said at a sentencing hearing. The four defendants sentenced so far this week by U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain in Manhattan have received a combined 21 years behind bars compared with a total of 56 years recommended by the court’s probation office for their crimes. Prosecutors had argued for even longer terms. “You have been extraordinarily merciful here,” but “we ask for justice on behalf of victims,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Schwartz said yesterday to Swain. More on Bloomberg [...]
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Annette Bongiorno, who joined Bernard Madoff’s investment firm straight out of high school and spent four decades in his employment, much of it as his office manager, was sentenced to six years in prison on Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain, showing leniency and handing out a sentence much shorter than federal guidelines allowed and what prosecutors had sought, said Bongiorno was clearly not “evil” like Madoff, but that she “consciously avoided” the truth about Madoff’s fraud. Bongiorno, 67, “willfully blinded herself,” Taylor said, and “chose Madoff’s blessing” over “her own moral compass.” More on Fox News [...] NEW YORK — The physical voices of the thousands of victims of Bernard Madoff’s fraud weren’t heard in court Monday when the first of five of his former staffers was sentenced for his role in the massive scam. But their concerns took the spotlight, nonetheless, as Daniel Bonventre, Madoff’s former operations manager, was sentenced to a 10-year prison term. More in USA Today [...] A federal Appeals Court on Monday blocked the trustee overseeing the Bernard Madoff bankruptcy case from reaching far back in time to recoup money that can be repaid to victims of the massive Ponzi scheme. Trustee Irving Picard had been pressing more than 1,000 individual investors and firms that had received payouts over the years from Madoff to surrender up to six years of those profits — some $1.6 billion. However, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ruled that Picard can only pursue two years of payments from those investors. More on Boston.com [...] NEW YORK — The former operations manager for Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 10 years in prison Monday for aiding the decades-long fraud that stole as much as $20 billion from investors. Daniel Bonventre, 67, was also held jointly liable with Madoff, four former co-workers and other conspirators for more than $155 billion in forfeitures, representing proceeds generated from one of the largest financial scams in history. The Manhattan resident became the first ex-Madoff employee sentenced to prison, as U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain denied bail pending expected appeals of the March convictions of Bonventre and the four former co-workers on conspiracy, securities fraud and other charges. More in USA Today [...] Bernard Madoff’s inner circle got millions of dollars in pay and perks by aiding the con man’s $17.5 billion fraud, dooming thousands of investors in the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. Now their efforts will earn them time behind bars. Five former Madoff colleagues face sentencing beginning Dec. 8 for using a web of fake account documents, phony regulatory filings and bogus computer programs to keep the scheme afloat for decades. For some victims, it’ll be their first taste of closure. More on Telegram.com [...] Finra must demonstrate how its controversial data-collection system will benefit investors in order to quell mounting criticism of the proposal, the organization’s leader said Friday. “We think the benefits are absolutely obvious, but we recognize it’s always our obligation to look closely at costs,” said Richard Ketchum, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. chairman and chief executive. “We’d be delighted to quantify [the benefits],” he said at a Consumer Federation of America conference in Washington. “I think that’s in the hundreds of millions of dollars from the standpoint of potentially averted investor harm.” More on Investment News [...] Six years ago on Thursday, Bernard Madoff was arrested over the longest, largest and arguably one of the most brazen financial scams in history. By the time investigators caught up with him, the silver-haired fraudster had bilked investors to the tune of $65 billion. Madoff is now behind bars, serving out what he can of a 150-year sentence. Meanwhile, efforts to make sure others can’t repeat his crime have similarly languished. In the years since his indictment, legislation to protect Main Street investors’ savings and retirement accounts has failed to move through Congress. More on Aljazeera [...] Just as the industry awaits clarity from Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary Jo White on where she stands regarding a uniform fiduciary rule for brokers and advisors, SEC Commissioner Kara Stein said Thursday that the Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance is “spearheading a very important project examining the effectiveness of disclosures.” Indeed, both Stein and SEC Commissioner Michael Piwowar have both recently espoused the benefits of “investor testing” as a means to help the agency better disclose broker and advisor standards of care. More on ThinkAdvisor [...] A consumer group is hunting for individual investors hurt by financial advisers who weren’t required to put their clients’ interests first. |
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