In the latest development in the $17 billion Ponzi scheme case involving Bernard L. Madoff, five former employees sought permission from the court to show the jury video evidence of their former boss telling an audience about the impossibility of committing a fraud, Bloomberg said in a report.
Based on the video, Madoff graced a conference about the future of the stock market in New York in October of 2007. He made an appearance and discussed how securities fraud has been made impossible due to the the regulatory environment. A filing yesterday in a Manhattan federal court said that one of the defense lawyers, Eric Breslin, pointed to one part of the video wherein Madoff displayed normalcy when discussing fraud.
The video, said Bloomberg, was taken around the time US Securities and Exchange Commission and KPMG inspectors had been duped by Madoff 14 months prior to the collapse of the scheme. The US government claimed that Madoff's former employees helped Madoff trick the regulators. The former Madoff aides, on the other hand, presented the video to strengthen their claim that Madoff had conned them into the scheme.
Breslin wrote, "We seek to illustrate for the jury what these defendants saw, what the SEC saw, what KPMG saw, and what countless others saw when Mr. Madoff perpetuated his lies with ease and practice in the days when his reputation and his word were unimpeachable. This was not a man whose palms sweated or who twitched when he lied," Breslin wrote.
Bloomberg said that the video in question will be decided upon by US District Judge Laura Taylor Swain, who is currently overseeing the court trial. The news agency said the defense case could start as early as today after four months of testimonies from the prosecution.
When asked for comment by Bloomberg about the video evidence, the US government did not reply to the news agency's request immediately.
Madoff is currently incarcerated at a North Carolina federal prison serving the remainder of his 150-year sentence.
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