(Daniel Shapiro)
PONZI SLEAZE: Feds prosecuting five Bernie Madoff (inset, top) underlings say sex was rampant in the office and Madoff was in a love triangle with a defendant, leading speculation to either Annette Bongiorno (inset, bottom) or Joann Crupi (left). (
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When they weren’t figuratively screwing investors, the folks at Madoff Securities were literally screwing each other, bombshell court documents revealed yesterday.
Ponzi fiend Bernie Madoff was personally enmeshed in a workplace “love triangle” and presided over a sexual cesspool where key staffers ripped off victims and each other’s clothes with equal abandon, according to the shocking Manhattan federal court filing.
The behavior at Club Bernie was so inflammatory, that it’s the feds who are asking that jurors be barred from hearing details when Madoff’s former secretary and four other staffers face trial in the record $64 billion rip-off.
Prosecutors are not naming names — besides Madoff’s — and did not reveal whether any of their own witnesses in the case were involved in the alleged sex shenanigans.
The feds did say that the “various” employees involved include “all but one of the defendants, several government witnesses and Bernard Madoff himself.”
The frisky staffers “were at various times in romantic and/or sexual relationships with one another” over the course of the multi-decade fraud, the papers say.
“One of the defendants was in a love triangle with Bernard Madoff himself,” the papers gush.
The filing caused jaws to drop among defense lawyers, and speculation to run wild among observers.
Assuming Madoff’s lover was not a guy, that would leave two female defendants on his possible office-booty list — his short, portly 65-year-old ex-secretary Annette Bongiorno, and his underling Joann Crupi.
Bongiorno, 65, functioned as an office supervisor who allegedly sent out phony account statements, prosecutors say.
Crupi, 52, meanwhile handled investor funds and kept track of the firm’s daily cash balance.
Throwing off the scent on Crupi is that she has previously told the court she has a lesbian partner and two adopted sons.
Crupi allegedly received $2.7 million directly from Madoff just in 2008.
Prosecutors also allege that Bongiorno pocketed more than $14 million in fraudulent profits by “investing” about $920,000 in Madoff’s scheme.
Each of the five defendants — including former operations officer Daniel Bonventre and computer programmers George Perez and Jerome O’Hara — appeared in court yesterday and pleaded not guilty.
This is not the first time Madoff, 75, has been accused of fooling around. Sheryl Weinstein, an accountant who blames the con man for stealing her family’s savings, published a book in 2009 claiming she had an extramarital affair with the jailed-for-life Ponzi king.