Two Programmers Charged With Helping Madoff Falsify Records
November 15th, 2009Via: New York Times:
Two computer programmers who worked for Bernard L. Madoff’s brokerage firm were arrested on Friday and accused of helping him sustain his long-running Ponzi scheme.
The two men — Jerome O’Hara of Malverne, N.Y., and George Perez of East Brunswick, N.J. — were also named in a civil case filed on Friday by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Securities regulators said that the two men created the computer software that generated the elaborate paper trail that Mr. Madoff used to conceal his fraud from investors and regulators for more than 15 years.
According to the complaints, both men grew uneasy about their role in the fraud three years ago and closed their own Madoff accounts in April 2006, withdrawing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
After a confrontation with Mr. Madoff in September 2006, they demanded pay raises and bonuses — what securities regulators called “hush money” — and agreed to remain silent about the fraud, according to the complaints.
Mr. O’Hara, 46, and Mr. Perez, 43, were each arrested at their homes on Friday and taken to federal court in Manhattan for arraignment. Both were released on a $1 million bail, to be secured by cash and property and co-signed by three financially responsible people within the next week. If convicted, they face up to 30 years in prison.
Gordon Mehler, a lawyer for Mr. O’Hara, declined to comment except to say his client would plead “not guilty” to the complaint. Lawrence Krantz, Mr. Perez’s lawyer, did not return messages left at his office on Friday.
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