The Devil's Helpers

Two Are Charged With Helping Madoff Falsify Records:

Two computer programmers who worked for Bernard L. Madoff's brokerage firm were arrested on Friday on criminal charges of helping perpetuate his long-running Ponzi scheme.

The two men -- Jerome O'Hara of Malvern, N.Y., and George Perez of East Brunswick, N.J. -- were also sued by securities regulators, who said they had helped keep the Madoff fraud running for more than 15 years and took "hush money" to keep it secret.

The criminal and civil complaints accuse the men of creating and maintaining the software that enabled Mr. Madoff to generate a completely fictitious paper trail to conceal his fraud from investors and regulators.

Hopefully the first of many prosecutions.

More like this

I find the epic Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff morbidly fascinating. He managed to lose 50 billion dollars, which can't be easy: A busy stock-trading operation occupied the 19th floor, and the computers and paperwork of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities filled the 18th floor. But the 17th…
Here's James Surowiecki on the surprising link between easy credit and rampant fraud, as epitomized by the Madoff ponzi scheme: Fraud is a boom-time crime because it feeds on the faith of investors, and during bubbles that faith is overflowing. So while robbing a bank seems to be a demand-driven…
Naturally, since this friday was the first time that the SB server has really been down since I start blogging (planned downtime, as it happens, for a major system upgrade), there was spectacularly bad math in the local news here in NYC friday afternoon. I'm not sure how long this has been the…
'It Was All Fake,' Madoff Aide Tells Court: Frank DiPascali was an 18-year-old "kid from Queens" with a high school education when he landed a job with a rising star on Wall Street named Bernard L. Madoff. ... "No purchases or sales of securities were actually taking place in their accounts," Mr.…

There surely ought to be plenty of programmers for Godman Sachs (and the like) who are quivering in their boots.

By bioIgnoramus (not verified) on 13 Nov 2009 #permalink