Bernie Madoff’s longtime secretary says she was so badly fooled for decades by the notorious fraudster that she blindly considered him her “hero” and “loved him” like a “big brother.”
Testifying before a Manhattan federal jury Monday, Annette Bongiorno, 65, denied the feds’ allegations that she and four other ex-staffers on trial for fraud helped their ex-boss pull off his epic $17 billion Ponzi scheme.
Her face barely peeking over a computer terminal on the witness stand, the pint-sized pepperpot said in a thick New York accent that she began working for Madoff at age 19. She was unaware, she said, that Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme under her nose during her 40 years on the job and that she personally broke laws by backdating phony trades at his request.
Bongiorno spoke fondly of her ex-boss, even crying at times while discussing how Madoff in the early 1990s cut through red tape to get her dying mother into a bed at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. Her mother would die three months later, but Bongiorno said she was grateful to Madoff for getting her mother relocated from Florida to New York so her family could say their goodbyes.
“In typical Bernie Madoff fashion, he said ‘I made them an offer they could not refuse,” she recalled.
Bongiorno said she was so grateful that she began keeping a photo of Madoff dressed in a tuxedo by her desk with the notation “my hero” written on it.
“I loved Bernie,” said Bongiorno. “He was like my big brother.”
She said she had a co-worker toss it in the trash after Madoff got busted by the feds in December 2008.
The photo is no longer available, but Bongiorno’s lawyer, Roland Riopelle, showed jurors a 1988 photo he showed them during opening statements in October that included a caption “Bernie Madoff as Annette saw him.”
The photo – which Bongiorno said was taken in Montauk – portrays Madoff as her white knight, sitting regally atop a horse with wind blowing through his tousled hair.
Although the feds say she and Bernie are full of baloney, Bongiorno said the two bonded over ham and cheese.
She said Madoff used to stutter when she first began working for him, and that on her first day at work he couldn’t complete a sentence when he asked her to order him ham-and-cheese sandwich. Madoff, she recalled, got so frustrated that he blurted out, “Just get me a ham sandwich!”
She said her brother also had a stuttering problem, so she understood what her boss was saying — and that Madoff was shocked when she got the order correct.
“He gave me the thumbs up and said, ‘You are going to do very good here,'” she recalled.
Bongiorno pocketed more than $14 million in fraudulent profits and oversaw an investment-advisory unit at the center of Madoff’s scheme, prosecutors say.
She is expected to continue testifying Tuesday.
Riopelle told the Post Sunday he doesn’t expect Bongiorno’s testimony to provide any dirty laundry about Madoff’s alleged sex-crazed office antics — including a bizarre “love triangle” that the feds claim he was enmeshed in with one of the co-defendants.
Prosecutors never named names. But, assuming Madoff’s lover isn’t a guy, Bongiorno and former accounts manager Joann Crupi are the only possible co-defendants on Bernie’s booty-call list.
Crupi has previously told the court she has a lesbian partner and two adopted sons.
Riopelle said he doesn’t intend to bring up the sex allegations made by the feds in August legal papers — and doesn’t expect prosecutors will either when they cross-examine Bongiorno.