DiPascali, Madoff Accomplice Denied Bail, Again
Posted on 28. Oct, 2009 by Shera Crossan in Business & Finance, Events, Israel & Jewish Issues, Shera Crossan, Top Stories
A judge in New York challenged the government to prove that jailed financier Bernard Madoff’s former finance chief is a valuable cooperator Wednesday, implying he may only be pretending to help prosecutors in the hopes of garnering a lighter sentence.
U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan turned down a bail request for Frank DiPascali a second time, rejecting a $10 million bail package as insufficient to ensure he does not flee.
DiPascali, 52, pleaded guilty in August to helping Madoff’s multidecade Ponzi scheme that cost thousands of investors billions of dollars. Madoff is serving a 150-year prison sentence.
“The parties are basically telling me I should trust them and leave it to the professionals,” the judge said.
Yet, he added, the government did not seem to have “the slightest clue about what turned out to be the biggest fraud in U.S. history” before Madoff gave himself up in a confession to his family and the FBI last December.
Sullivan said DiPascali might be continuing to act fraudulently in “a last stand” after a decade of lies by pretending to cooperate in the hopes of reducing a potential maximum sentence of 125 years in prison.
As Sullivan spoke, the bespectacled DiPascali dropped his head into his hands. At other times, he shook his head. Still, Mukasey said his client was even more enthusiastic to help the government after Sullivan ordered him jailed without bail to the surprise of prosecutors at an earlier bail hearing.
Sullivan called DiPascali’s role in the fraud “crucial” and said his potential sentence was “astronomical,” fueling an incentive to flee that might be greater than safeguards that would include electronic monitoring and $2 million in cash or property to be posted by others.more
Comments