Madoff associates should get ’significant’ time: prosecutors

Five former employees of disgraced investment manager Bernard Madoff should be sentenced to “significant” prison sentences of up to 20 years or more, prosecutors said in a court filing on Friday. “The five defendants here, along with others, were the people who allowed Madoff’s fraud to succeed as wildly as it did,” prosecutors with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s office in Manhattan said in the filing. “Justice requires that each receive a significant prison sentence, commensurate with their active and long-standing role in the fraud.” A jury in March convicted Madoff’s former office director Daniel Bonventre, portfolio managers Annette Bongiorno and Joann Crupi, and computer programmers Jerome O’Hara and George Perez for helping their former boss conceal his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme for decades. More on Reuters here.