Friday October 30, 04:11 PM
Madoff accountant to plead guilty: prosecutors
NEW YORK (AFP) - The accountant accused of helping Bernard Madoff steal billions of dollars in Wall Street's biggest Ponzi scheme is ready to plead guilty, prosecutors in New York said Friday.
David Friehling will agree to cooperate with the government and will enter a guilty plea on Tuesday, Assistant US Attorney Lisa Baroni said in a letter to the federal court in Manhattan.
"The defendant will plead guilty to the Information pursuant to a cooperation agreement with the Government," Baroni wrote.
Friehling, who ran his accountancy out of a suburb of New York, faces up to 108 years in prison if he pleads guilty to all seven charges of fraud, false filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and obstructing the tax authorities.
However, defendants often receive lighter sentences if they plead guilty and cooperate with investigators.
Investors duped in Madoff's scam lost 21.2 billion dollars, the court-appointed liquidator said Wednesday.
The figure, far higher than an earlier estimate of 13 billion dollars, represents estimated losses by investors who put more into Madoff's fraudulent investment firm than they withdrew, said the liquidator, Irving Picard.
Madoff, now serving a 150-year prison sentence for fraud, claimed just before his arrest last December to have been managing 65 million dollars. However, much of that appears to have comprised phony funds, not investors' cash.
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