The former operations chief for Bernie Madoff on trial for allegedly assisting in the epic $65 billion Ponzi scheme quietly wrote himself fat company checks to collect “secret” bonuses totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, a government witness testified on Wednesday.
Meaghan Schmidt — a director for a firm hired to unravel the fraud at Madoff Securities after the Ponzi monster was busted in December 2008 – told a Manhattan federal court jury that Madoff green-lighted Daniel Bonventre to write yearly checks to himself from 1998 through 2008, ranging from $45,000 to $60,000 a pop.
Schmidt, of the firm AlixPartners, recalled Bonventre saying Madoff authorized the under-the-radar payments because the operations chief’s salary was “already so high” that he didn’t want extra bonuses “scrutinized by other employees.”
Prosecutors displayed payroll records showing Bonventre earned $1.1 million in 2008 – including his final company bonus of $200,000. He also cut himself a check that year for another $50,000 “secret” bonus not included in his yearly salary.
The news of the “secret” bonuses came two days after a former data-entry operator for Madoff Securities testified that Bonventre – with Madoff’s blessing — had the company directly reimburse tens of thousands of dollars in personal credit card expenses racked up by Bonventre and his wife. This included two family trips to St. Barthelemy totaling nearly $19,000 in hotel bills, a $3,224 bill from Barney’s, thousands of dollars in dues for his Richmond County Country Club in Staten Island, and other expenses.
The feds have claimed he filed false tax returns to hide nearly $275,000 in checks he wrote himself from the firm’s bank accounts between 2003 and 2007. They also allege he covered up the massive fraud by backdating phony stock trades – netting himself a tidy $2 million in profits in the process.
Also on trial are Madoff’s former account manager Joann Crupi, secretary Annette Bongiorno and computer programmers Jerome O’Hara and George Perez.