The strongest case against Madoff’s 1992 claim is his history of lying, Picard said in court filings. Madoff, he added, is “a witness who admits to lying for a living.”
“Every bit of evidence and every lick of testimony supports the argument that it was fraudulent from very early on, at least since the mid-’70s,” said Matthew Schwartz, who was the longest serving prosecutor on the case, in a recent interview.
The burden rests with Picard, as the plaintiff, to prove that no legitimate trading took place, said Jon Barooshian, a former prosecutor in Massachusetts who isn’t involved in the case. He said his “gut feeling” is the early investors are trying to leverage a settlement.
“A jury will never go with anything Madoff has to say,” he said.
Two heirs of one of Madoff’s early French customers, Albert Igoin, opted to settle rather than continue fighting as part of the pre-1992 investor group, their lawyer said. Laurence and Emilie Apfelbaum, his daughter and granddaughter, agreed to pay $7.49 million after Picard sued them for $150 million, an amount a judge later cut to $25 million.
Madoff doesn’t deny his guilt. In his deposition, he recalled thinking to himself that pleading guilty would “eliminate the government spending millions of dollars and years in a trial,” he said. “I’m just going to admit that I was guilty because I was from 1992 on -- which was bad enough.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.