Feds drop bid to get longer prison terms for Madoff aides
Federal prosecutors delivered an early holiday gift to five former employees of Bernard Madoff, by dropping a legal fight to force longer prison terms for their roles in aiding the Ponzi scheme mastermind's massive fraud.
The five — Daniel Bonventre, Annette Bongiorno JoAnn Crupi, George Perez and Jerome O'Hara — were convicted in March 2014 on charges they aided and profited from the decades-long scam that stole an estimated $20 billion from thousands of investors.
U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain sentenced them late last year to prison sentences that ranged from 2½ years to 10 years, far lower than the 78-year-to-220-year maximum terms the former co-workers faced under federal sentencing guidelines.
Verdict on 5 ex-Madoff employees: Guilty of fraud
The unexpectedly light sentences prompted an unusual courtroom protest by prosecutors. "Your honor has shown extraordinary mercy," Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Schwartz told Swain during one of the sentencing hearings. "But we ask, on behalf of the victims of this fraud, for justice."
The judge said she had weighed all evidence, sentencing guidelines and punishment recommendations, as well as the relative complicity of each defendant in comparison with Madoff. He's serving a 150-year prison sentence after pleading guilty without standing trial after the scheme's Dec. 2008 collapse.
Taylor Swain noted that several of the former co-workers had spent months under home detention or electronic monitoring before being convicted. The sentences also require the former co-workers to forfeit millions of dollars in assets traced to the fraud, the judge said.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara nonetheless followed up the courtroom protest by filing a motion in January asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to review the sentences. But prosecutors withdrew the appeal in a one-page stipulation filed on Monday.
Crupi's lawyer, Eric Breslin, called the withdrawal "the right thing to do." Bharara's office declined to comment.
That left the last word to the judge, who appeared to anticipate the outcome during her Dec. 2014 courtroom exchange with Schwartz. "I shall eagerly await the newspaper reports of the sentences on appeal," Swain said at the time.