Five former members of Bernard L. Madoff’s inner circle told a “staggering” number of lies to prop up their boss’s $17.5 billion Ponzi scheme, a prosecutor said during closing arguments in their criminal trial, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. “Day after day, year after year, these defendants told an avalanche of different lies that allowed Madoff to steal billions from investors,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Zach told jurors in Manhattan federal court. They each “made the fraud possible in their own way.” Testimony in the case ended yesterday. The criminal trial, now in its fifth month, is the first stemming from the swindle, which collapsed after Madoff’s arrest in December 2008 revealed his investment advisory unit hoarded customer cash for decades instead of using it to buy securities. Prosecutors say that the five were driven by greed to create millions of fake trading confirmations, bogus customer statements and falsified internal records to trick customers and regulators. Defense lawyers claim the group was duped into unwittingly aiding Madoff’s plot. All deny wrongdoing.
