U.S. Court of Appeals in New York rejected arguments by lawyers of five former employees who worked for Bernard Madoff. On Wednesday, the court concluded that five of them were convicted at a fair trial and upheld the convictions.
ABC News reported that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the evidence offered at a six-month trial that ended in 2014 was sufficient to convict the former workers of Bernard Madoff. Lawyers of the former Madoff's employees challenged the convictions on multiple counts and said that they are cheated of a fair trial by court rulings, misconduct of the prosecutors and insufficient evidence. However, the judge disagreed and rejected the claim.
"While defendants assert that the prosecution here repeatedly mischaracterized the record, the district court reasonably concluded that, in most instances, the challenged arguments represented fair — if aggressive — inferences that the jury was entitled to draw from the evidence," said the 2nd Circuit Court.
"The evidence we presented over nearly six months of trial demonstrated that each of the five defendants was a 'vital' and 'integral' member of Madoff's scheme," Matthew L. Schwartz, another prosecutor on the case, told Bloomberg. Schwartz is now working at Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP in New York.
The sentence for the former employees are ranging from two and a half years to 10 years in prison. Reuters reported that former back-office director Daniel Bonventre, ex-portfolio managers Annette Bongiorno and Joann Crupi, and fomer computer programmers Jerome O'Hara and George Perez also lost to a challenge, called a racial aspect of a federal prosecutor's closing argument.
Five of them were tried together in a six-month trial and were found guilty on various charges, from securities fraud, bank fraud and tax fraud. Judge Laura Taylor Swain convicted Daniel Bonventre to 10-years in prison, while Joann Crupi and Annette Bongiorno must serve for six years. While Jerome O'Hara and George Perez were sentenced to two and a half years.
Those five former employees are among the 15 employees who were either convicted or pleaded guilty in connection with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. Lawyers for the defendants were disappointed with the court ruling, as the decision will confirm their clients sentence in prison.
"These defendants were victims of Madoff's misuse of his iconic status and are paying for it with more than just money," said a lawyer for Bonventre Andrew Frisch.
Their boss, Bernard Madoff, who pleaded guilty in 2009, is now serving 150-year prison term. Madoff admitted that he had elaborated a Ponzi-scheme. His fraudulent investment operation had cost $17 billion or more of investors money in principal.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York rejected arguments from five former employees of Bernard Madoff. The court concluded that they were convicted at a fair trial and upheld the convictions imposed on them.
