Five longtime employees of Bernard Madoff’s investment firm will go to trial Oct. 7, 2013 for their alleged roles in history’s biggest Ponzi scheme, a judge said.
US District Judge Laura Taylor Swain set the date yesterday after the former Madoff employees, Daniel Bonventre, Annette Bongiorno, Joann Crupi, Jerome O’Hara and George Perez, pleaded not guilty to new charges.
Prosecutors in the office of US Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan on Monday filed a new indictment alleging the five joined a conspiracy to defraud investors that got its start in the early 1970s. The charges add to the 17 criminal counts filed against the former employees in November 2010, for a total of 33 counts.
Bonventre, 65, and Bongiorno, 64, worked for Madoff for 40 years, with Bongiorno rising to the level of supervisor and account manager. Crupi, 51, an employee since 1983, tracked daily bank account activity, prosecutors said. Perez, 46, and O’Hara, 49, started at the firm in the early 1990s.