Five former aides to investment manager Bernard Madoff were convicted on Monday of charges that they helped their boss conceal his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme for years, according to the Associated Press.
A federal jury in New York found back-office director Daniel Bonventre, portfolio managers Annette Bongiorno and Joann Crupi, and computer programmers Jerome O'Hara and George Perez guilty on all counts, including securities fraud and conspiracy to defraud clients, the AP reported.
The five-month trial was one of the longest white-collar criminal trials in Manhattan federal court history, featuring dozens of witnesses and thousands of documents, according to the AP. It is the first criminal trial stemming from Madoff's fraud.
The five defendants will be sentenced in late July, the AP reported.
"The scheme these defendants helped perpetuate cost innumerable investors their life savings," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement, according to the AP. "Now it likely will cost the defendants their freedom."
Madoff, 75, is serving a 150-year-prison sentence after pleading guilty in March 2009 to running the Ponzi scheme, estimated to have cost investors more than $17 billion of principal, the AP reported. He was arrested in December 2008.
"The list of Bernard Madoff's victims now includes these five former employees," Andrew Frisch, a lawyer for Bonventre, said after the verdict, adding that he plans to appeal, according to the AP.
The defendants claimed Madoff duped them into becoming unwitting accomplices, using a potent combination of charm and deception, the AP reported.
But prosecutors pointed to internal documents seized from Madoff's investment firm, including handwritten notes from the defendants, as clear evidence they knew what was happening, according to the AP.
"The notion that these defendants didn't know the trading was fake is an absurdity," Assistant U.S. Attorney Randall Jackson said at the end of the trial, the AP reported.
The key government witness was Madoff's right-hand man, Frank DiPascali, who testified as part of a plea deal and implicated each of the five defendants in the fraud, according to the AP.
Defense lawyers urged the jury to disregard his claims, calling him an inveterate liar desperate to avoid a lifelong prison term, the AP reported. But several jurors interviewed after the verdict said they found DiPascali's testimony credible.
