The government’s star witness against five Bernie Madoff staffers is a “racist” who once said the black victims in the fatal 1986 Howard Beach bias attack “got what they deserved” by coming into a “white neighborhood,” court records unsealed Wednesday claim.
A lawyer for one of the co-defendants had planned to grill former Madoff CFO Frank DiPascali — an admitted-fraudster-turned-cooperator — about his thoughts on the notorious attack that left 23-year-old Michael Griffith dead and two others seriously injured after their car broke down in Howard Beach, but a judge barred it following a heated discussion behind closed doors.
Andrew Frisch, a lawyer for former operations chief Daniel Bonventre, claimed his client wanted nothing to do with DiPascali after being turned off by his thoughts on the Howard Beach slaying.
“Some African-American men had a car break down in what was then I think still a white neighborhood in Howard Beach. One of the men was killed and others were assaulted,” Frisch told the judge.
“The discussion was from Mr. DiPascali’s point of view that the guys got what they deserved because it was a white neighborhood. From that point on, Mr. Bonventre stayed away from Mr. DiPascali, had virtually nothing to do with him until the collapse of the firm” in 2008.
The Jan. 9 closed-door session in Manhattan federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain’s robing room also included prosecutors, who had objected minutes earlier in court to Frisch asking DiPascali about the notorious attack.
Frisch later said he hoped to show DiPascali previously lied under oath by claiming he sometimes associated with Bonventre after work.
Swain, however, shot down Frisch’s line of questioning, saying “the suggestion” that DiPascali is “racist” could create “unfair prejudice” with jurors. She then temporarily sealed the transcript of the robing-room meeting before ordering it released Wednesday.
Bonventre and four other ex-Madoff staffers were convicted in March of securities fraud and other crimes, ending a five-month, white-collar trial that was one of the longest in New York’s history.
The defendants each face a maximum of 78 to 220 years behind bars. They are all appealing their convictions.