Bernie Madoff’s firm was certainly no “Santa’s Factory,” and five of the Ponzi monster’s staffers who are on trial for allegedly helping him pull off his epic $17 billion fraud knew they were breaking the law while cashing in for decades, a Manhattan federal prosecutor said Thursday.
“The notion that the defendants could have engaged in all the [alleged criminal] activities while believing” that “Bernie Claus” wasn’t a crook “is ridiculous,” Assistant US Attorney Randall Jackson told jurors while delivering the government’s rebuttal to 20 hours of closing statements by defense lawyers.
“Madoff Securities was not Santa’s Factory,” he added. “The defendants were not children. During the decades they worked at Madoff Securities, they were adults.”
Defense lawyers called the arguments “inappropriate.”