The SEC is not the only one suing Cohmad Securities and several of its principals today.
This afternoon, Irving H. Picard (pictured), the court-appointed trustee for the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (BLMIS), announced that he had filed a complaint in bankruptcy court against Cohmad Securities Corporation and certain of its principals, including Maurice “Sonny” Cohn, Marcia Cohn and Robert Jaffe. Picard announced that the complaint seeks to avoid decades worth of transactions through which BLMIS paid well over $100 million to Cohmad, Sonny Cohn and other Cohmad related individuals in exchange for their introducing victims to BLMIS and knowingly helping Madoff create, fund and maintain his massive Ponzi scheme.
David Sheehan, counsel for the Trustee and a partner at Baker & Hostetler, stated that “although Madoff stated he was operating alone, our investigation has yielded significant evidence that, in fact, a variety of other people helped Madoff prey on innocent victims.” Picard added that “[w]e are bringing this lawsuit to help recover, at the very least, the commissions that Madoff’s enablers generated for knowingly introducing unsuspecting investors to Madoff.”
