Investing Skill
Picard’s lawyer, David Sheehan, spent hours questioning Madoff, who touted his early investing prowess.
“I started my business with literally $500,” Madoff said. “By ’87, I was a rich guy.”
At another point, Madoff was asked about his statements to the FBI during questioning at his apartment. In the agents’ notes, Sheehan said at the deposition, they wrote that Madoff said the fraud began in the 1960s and that it got going “in earnest in the ’70s” and “grew much larger in the ’80s.”
“I certainly never said that,” Madoff, now 79, testified.
“So they’re lying?” Sheehan asked of the agents.
“Maybe they misunderstood me,” Madoff said, adding the agents appeared at the time to be looking at family photos on his piano. “They didn’t seem to have much of an interest in what was going on. I don’t know why they were even there, quite frankly.”
Microfilm Records
Millions of pages from microfilm reels at Madoff’s firm, which were painstakingly restored by Picard this year, may show that the trading was once legitimate, said Helen Davis Chaitman, a lawyer for the early investors. Picard says they’re merely internal documents about purported trades, none of which are backed by third-party records. A jury may eventually decide the matter.
“I think these records will show that real securities were purchased with the money of the investment advisory customers in the 1980s and thereafter,” Chaitman said.