Government Action, Hot News, Legal Industry, Madoff, News, Scammers

Former Madoff CFO Close to Deal, and What About the Accountants?

According to Crain’s New York Business and the New York Daily News (is this stuff even news anymore outside New York?), Frank DiPascali, the guy who was CFO of Madoff Securities, has agreed to plead guilty to unspecified charges and presumably is giving the feds some information. We wonder what this guy knows. There is speculation that he knew very little about the Madoff family members’ involvement, but that he may have helped some of the so-called “feeders,” like Frank Avellino, phony up statements.

Meantime, Bernie’s storefront accountant, David Friehling (great publicity for New City, NY), was supposed to plead guilty but in a last minute shocker last month decided to plead not guilty. He will be in court next on October 1. Either way this guy is toast. He audited the books for many years, so either he participated in the scam, or he at least knew about it, or the best you can hope for is that he was so inept that his extreme negligence caused him not to spot the pilfering.

This Chinese water torture approach to getting to the many people involved in this or who knew about it has got to be horrendous for the many, many people who were victimized, including way too many friends of mine (no, neither my family nor I invested with Madoff), some watching elderly parents go back to work because they are now penniless. Grrrr.