NEW YORK (Reuters) - Five former
employees of disgraced investment manager Bernard Madoff should be
sentenced to "significant" prison sentences of up to 20 years or
more, prosecutors said in a court filing on Friday.
"The five defendants here, along with others, were the people who
allowed Madoff's fraud to succeed as wildly as it did," prosecutors
with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's office in Manhattan said in the
filing. "Justice requires that each receive a significant prison
sentence, commensurate with their active and long-standing role in
the fraud."
A jury in March convicted Madoff's former office director Daniel
Bonventre, portfolio managers Annette Bongiorno and Joann Crupi, and
computer programmers Jerome O'Hara and George Perez for helping
their former boss conceal his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme for
decades.
In the filing, prosecutors said that Bonventre and Bongiorno should
be sentenced to a term greater than the 20-year sentence recommended
by federal probation officers; that Crupi should be sentenced to
more than the recommended 14-year sentence; and that O'Hara and
Perez be sentenced to "substantially more" than the recommended
eight years for each.
The five-month trial was one of the longest white-collar criminal
trials in Manhattan federal court history, and the first criminal
trial stemming from Madoff's fraud.
Madoff pleaded guilty in 2009 to running the Ponzi scheme estimated
to have cost investors more than $17 billion of principal, and is
serving a 150-year-prison sentence.
During the trial, attorneys for the former staffers cast their
clients as mere puppets of a pathological liar who bewitched them
into becoming unwitting accomplices.
"They thought he was almost a god," said Eric Breslin, a lawyer for
Crupi, during the trial.
The jury disagreed, however, and found them guilty on all counts,
including securities fraud and conspiracy to defraud clients.
In court filings, attorneys for Bonventre, Perez and O'Hara
requested a sentence of home confinement and community service, or a
short prison term. Attorneys for Bongiorno recommended she be
sentenced to between eight and 10 years. Crupi's lawyer asked the
court to exercise leniency, arguing that 14 years is "nearly as bad
as a life sentence," as she would then be 70 upon her release.
Gordon Mehler, a lawyer for O'Hara, and Larry Krantz, a lawyer for
Perez, declined to comment. Lawyers for Bonventre, Bongiorno and
Crupi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Additional reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Eric Walsh)
