Five former aides to “Ponzi King” Bernie Madoff lost their bid to have their convictions overturned by arguing, among other things, that the jury verdict was tainted by a black prosecutor playing the race card.
A federal appeals court in Manhattan rejected the motley crew’s claims, which were argued last month, that the jury was improperly swayed by a prosecutor’s references to the work by federal Judge Constance Baker Motley, who is also a civil rights activist, during his closing arguments.
“While the prosecutor’s choice of subject was peculiar, and his rhetoric needlessly grandiose, it did not constitute severe misconduct,” the three-judge panel wrote in a ruling released Wednesday.
It upholds the 2014 convictions of Daniel Bonventre, Annette Bongiorno, Jerome O’Hara, George Perez and Joann Crupi, who helped keep Madoff’s multibillion-dollar scheme afloat by creating fake customer account statements and falsifying IRS regulatory filings, among other misdeeds.
The appeals court also rejected the group’s other legal arguments for getting off scot-free, including claims of prosecutorial misconduct and insufficient evidence.