Madoff’s CFO is in court, where the U.S. has presented a 10 – count charging document to which he’s expected to plead guilty later today. (bumped)
The charging document, filed in Manhattan federal court just hours before the scheduled plea proceeding, accuses DiPascali, 52, of conspiracy, securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, falsifying records, money laundering, perjury and other crimes.
DiPascali worked for 33 years in the investment advisory arm of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities in New York, many of them as chief financial executive, before the 2008 economic decline exposed a fraud of as much as $65 billion (39.3 billion pounds).
Madoff, who swindled large and small investors worldwide over at least 20 years, admitted in a guilty plea in March to having operated a classic Ponzi scheme, a fraud in which early investors are paid with the money of new clients.
DiPascali faces a maximum sentence of 20 years for several of the crimes with which he is charged.
The man is 52. Wanna bet he’d like to get out of jail before he’s 70? I hear the first stirrings of a canary concert.
Update: Aha! Now the WSJ is following the story. They reach the same conclusion I do, which is that Frankie’s singing. Cool!
The new name you’ve gotta know: Frank DiPascali. [obviously written by someone not reading this blog – Ed.] He’s the former CFO of the Madoff investment-advisory business. We blogged about him last Friday, here, when word broke that he’d be charged by the U.S. in connection with the multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
Today, however, come the charges themselves. Click here for the government’s filing; here for the WSJ story; here for the Bloomberg story. The charges are ten-fold. Among the crimes allegedly committed by DiPascali: mail fraud, wire fraud, securities fraud, investment-advisory fraud and perjury. But the big one: Conspiracy.
Of course, we have no idea who else the government thinks may have conspired with DiPascali, aside from Bernie himself, but the very notion is pretty intriguing given that DiPascali has decided to plead guilty — today, as a matter of fact. Also new news: according to the government (here), DiPascali has a plea agreement with the government. Bernie, as you’ll recall, didn’t.
In a letter to the court dated Monday, prosecutors recommended that DiPascali be released on a $2.5 million bond secured by his sister’s home.