|  | | 2009 News and Press Releases | | |
HEADLINE NEWS:
Madoff's former finance chief facing 'astronomical' sentence
Staff Writer
Associated Press. October 29, 2009
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EXCERPT: 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. Sullivan challenged Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Litt to prove that DiPascali's cooperation was valuable in the search for truth in a multidecade fraud that financial regulators say was kept secret for so long in large part because of DiPascali's shrewd financial maneuvers. He said Litt could submit a secret document that would show how DiPascali's cooperation was aiding the prosecution of others. Litt said he will consider making such a submission. DiPascali's lawyer, Marc Mukasey, suggested that his client was providing evidence that will be used to arrest others in the case, saying he was eager for Sullivan and other federal judges to hear his client prove his cooperation by telling his story on the witness stand. "Perhaps you'll hear that story or another judge will hear that story during multiple trials," Mukasey said. Sullivan, though, was reluctant to endorse DiPascali's cooperation based on the claims of government prosecutors and Mukasey, himself a federal prosecutor in Manhattan until several years ago. "The parties are basically telling me I should trust them and leave it to the professionals," the judge said. |
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