Metro

Judge refuses bid from Madoff’s ex-secretary, 4 others to push back trial dates to early January

Bernie Madoff’s former secretary and four other associates charged with profiting from the massive $65 billion Ponzi scheme were dealt a big blow today after a federal judge refused to push back their trials’ starting date from October to early January – even after their lawyers claimed a newly released superseding indictment is littered with “inflammatory” language detailing new allegations.

“Now that this trial is two months away, this bomb has been dropped in or midst,” Gordon Mehler, a lawyer for Madoff computer programmer Jerome O’Hara told Judge Laura Taylor Swain in Manhattan federal court.

Among the new allegations that the defendants’ lawyers claim they must now deal with in a superseding indictment released last week are that some of the five ex-Madoff workers “misappropriated” client funds and also were ordered to create “fake” financial reports to further the scheme — rather than the government’s previous assertion that they initially were unaware of the wrongdoing and only found out after the fact.

Swain sided with government, saying a trial extension isn’t warranted by law because there’s “no new charges and no new defendants” in the superseding indictment.

Madoff’s ex-longtime secretary Annette Bongiorno is facing trial on charges of securities fraud and conspiracy, as prosecutors allege she pocketed more than $14 million in fraudulent profits by “investing” about $920,000 in Madoff’s scheme. Other ex-Madoff employees on trial include O’Hara, another computer programmer George Perez, former operations officer Daniel Bonventre and an office worker Joann Crupi.

Each were in court yesterday and pleaded not guilty to the superseding indictment.