[ by Melanie Gretchen ]

Bernie Madoff's 5 former employees, facing charges they helped the Ponzi schemer run a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme over several decades, will have a year to prepare their defenses, a federal judge decided at a hearing in Manhattan federal court earlier this week.  Considering the earliest activity detailed in expanded charges dates back to the 1970's, that should be more than enough time.  [See our Who's News story, "U.S. Prosecutors: Madoff Fraud Began Early '70s; New Charges Filed".]

U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain scheduled 3-1/2 months for a trial to start on 10/7/13, when the defendants, all of whom entered pleas of not guilty, will face dozens of additional charges filed by U.S. prosecutors on Monday.  The 3 men and 2 women were first indicted in 2010.  Next fall, several other people, who also once worked for Madoff before his December 2008 arrest and the collapse of his investment firm, will testify against their former colleagues at trial.  New charges include bank fraud and tax offenses.

The defendants:

• Daniel Bonventre, former operations manager
• Annette Bongiorno and Joann Crupi, former investment advisory employees
• Jerome O'Hara and George Perez, former computer programmers

Madoff, 74, pled guilty in March 2009 to running a fraud of as much as $65 billion at his Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in New York.  Since 2009, he has been serving a 150-year prison sentence at Federal Correctional Institution Butner Medium near Butner, North Carolina.

The case: USA v O'Hara et al in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 10-0228.

For further details, go to [Reuters, 10/2/12] and [ABC, 7/14/09].