A federal prosecutor on Wednesday tried to poke holes in the testimony of a former Bernie Madoff executive accused of helping to pull off the epic $17 billion Ponzi scheme, with the two going toe-to-toe over simple questions such as what constitutes a “friend.”
Assistant US attorney Randall Jackson came out swinging in his cross-examination of ex-Madoff operations chief Daniel Bonventre during a Manhattan federal court fraud trial for Bonventre and four other ex-Madoff staffers.
The pit-bull prosecutor tried to paint Bonventre, 68, as of big a liar as Madoff after Bonventre claimed he didn’t know the definition of a “close friend” and whether he and another co-defendant, former Madoff secretary Annette Bongiorno, should be characterized that way.
“You went to college right?” Jackson sarcastically asked, as jurors snickered. “You took a bunch of classes? Do you have difficulty with the word ‘close?’”
Bonventre then confirmed the two were “friends” before backtracking and saying “we were working colleagues who were friendly towards each other.”
Later, Jackson – who is expected to break out harder questions when cross-examination continues Thursday — tried to take Bonventre to task for claiming under oath earlier that he never referred to himself as the company’s “controller.”
The prosecutor showed jurors some of Bonventre’s tax returns filed since 2002 in which he listed himself as “controller” when signing the documents. Bonventre claimed he never looked at the job title his accountant entered on the filings before signing them.
“I really did not pay attention to it,” said Bonventre.