Proffer agreements of two Bernard Madoff assistants who were interviewed by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York reportedly state that another Madoff aide instructed the two assistants to generate bogus trading tickets for Madoff’s investing clients. The WSJ reports that Annette Bongiorno, a four-decade veteran of the Madoff firm, asked the assistants to research daily share prices for blue-chip stocks from the previous month or several months, and to use that data to generate trade “tickets” that would supposedly reflect gains that were in line with the steady returns Madoff was claiming.
The WSJ reports that prosecutors are expected to soon file a criminal information against Madoff that “is expected to be detailed and will lay out the story of how the alleged fraud was committed. It will shine a light on the alleged fraud back to the 1980s, though it actually may have started earlier, according to the person familiar with the case.”
This is just the tip of the iceberg that is the Madoff Ponzi scheme. It is the responsibility of the court to find out as much information as it can to punish all those involved. Would there be anyone out there who believes, just because Madoff said so, that family members were not involved? They should all be put in isolated confinement in prisons far away from each other, so they will have plenty of time to think about how many lives they destroyed. They don’t qualify for “Club Fed” and better not be put there.