A federal court in Manhattan today had jurors see video clips that would support the innocence of several of Bernard Madoff's inner circle against claims that they conspired the former billionaire into duping investors with his $17.5 billion Ponzi scheme. Bloomberg said that Joann Crupi, Daniel Bonventre, Annette Bongiorno, Jerome O'Hara and George Perez have denied they knowingly took part in the fraud.
Crupi's lawyer, Eric Breslin told the jury that the first video clip had Madoff comparing regulators to children who roll their eyes when they are told what they need to do, Bloomberg said. The second clip showed Madoff addressing in the video about the impossibility of doing fraud on Wall Street. The third video showed madoff saying that regulatory problems could be solved if the human element is taken out, but later confided that even computers could be manipulated to do someone else's bidding.
The criminal trial of the five former Madoff employees has been running for five months now, Bloomberg said. It was revealed following Madoff's arrest in December 2008 that investor cash was hoarded by his investment unit instead of purchasing securities as promised. Crupi managed large accounts under former head Bongiorno in the investment advisory division at that time, while Bonventre ran the broker-dealer unit and was Madoff's former operations director of his business. O'Hara and Perez allegedly wrote code to provide fictitious account statements and other documents needed to convince Madoff's investors that their investments had been well spent.
US prosecutors have said that the group had been tricking thousands of victims that the money they have invested had went to buying securities. Bloomberg said that the discovery of the scheme revealed that all customer money has been placed in a single bank account to pay withdrawals, operation expenses and funded personal wealth.
The news agency said that the five's former boss is currently serving a 150-year sentence in a North Carolina prison after submitting a guilty plea in 2009.
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