David Kugel, a trader at Bernard Madoff’s brokerage for 38 years, told a jury the con man let him use backdated trades to boost profit in his personal investment account, as long as they didn’t look “ridiculous.” Kugel testified yesterday in Manhattan federal court at the trial of five former Madoff employees that most of the fake trading data he created was used for customer accounts managed by defendants Annette Bongiorno and Joann Crupi, who ran the investment business at the center of Madoff’s $17 billion Ponzi scheme. Using fake trades for himself was a “bonus,” he said. More on Bloomberg BusinessWeek here.
