The longtime secretary of imprisoned financier Bernard Madoff and four other back-office subordinates of the Ponzi king go to trial on Tuesday as the government for the first time shows a jury what it has collected in its five-year probe of one of history’s biggest frauds.
The trial in federal court in Manhattan is expected to last up to five months and feature the unveiling of the government’s prize witness, Frank DiPascali, Madoff’s former finance chief. The government is counting on him to explain to jurors the roles each defendant played in a fraud that prosecutors say stretched back into the early 1970s and consumed nearly $20 billion invested by thousands of victims, including retirees, charities, school trusts and even Holocaust survivors.
Much of the money has since been recovered by a trustee. Madoff was forced to reveal his fraud in 2008, agreeing accounts he had told investors were worth nearly $68 billion only days earlier actually held only a few hundred million dollars
The trial in federal court in Manhattan is expected to last up to five months and feature the unveiling of the government’s prize witness, Frank DiPascali, Madoff’s former finance chief. The government is counting on him to explain to jurors the roles each defendant played in a fraud that prosecutors say stretched back into the early 1970s and consumed nearly $20 billion invested by thousands of victims, including retirees, charities, school trusts and even Holocaust survivors.
Much of the money has since been recovered by a trustee. Madoff was forced to reveal his fraud in 2008, agreeing accounts he had told investors were worth nearly $68 billion only days earlier actually held only a few hundred million dollars