Journal presented poor picture of Bernie Madoff
Us Department of JusticeBernie Madoff, now in prison for life after ripping off millions from investors, was most upset over 1992 stipple drawing in the Wall Street Journal, not the spotlight on his fraudulent activities.
In 1992, when the Wall Street Journal ran an article about Bernie Madoff and another firm being investigated by the feds, his greatest worry wasn't the recent probe.
It was that his stipple portrait in the newspaper made his cheeks look chubby, a witness said Wednesday in the fraud trial of five former Madoff employees.
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'There was a cartoon picture of Bernie in the article,' testified Frank Dipascali, who worked with Madoff for decades. 'His biggest concern was that it didn't look like him. 'It makes my cheeks look fat,' he said. He didn't like the way he looked.'
The witness, who pleaded guilty in 2009 to his role in Madoff's multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme, was recounting how his boss escaped the 1992 investigation unscathed.
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Dipascali, who faces up to 150 years in prison, hopes his turncoat testimony against onetime colleagues Annette Bongiorno, Joann Crupi, Daniel Bonventre, Jerome O'Hara and George Perez will win him a more lenient sentence.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was probing a $440 million Madoff feeder fund run by accountants Frank Avellino and Michael Bienes. The men were promising their clients suspiciously high returns and had failed to register with the SEC.
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Madoff was terrified because his bogus account statements for the feeder fund didn't match the trading strategy that Avellino and Bienes had advertised to their clients, so he had his cronies conjure up new phony statements for the accountants to show the SEC, Dipascali said.
The SEC ultimately shut down Avellino and Bienes, but Madoff came out smelling like roses in his Journal profile, which revealed him as 'the broker with the Midas touch.' He wasn't arrested until 2008.
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'Did you feel like you dodged a bullet,' Assistant U.S. Attorney John Zach asked Dipascali. 'Most certainly,' the witness replied.
Madoff is now serving a life prison sentence.
dbeekman@nydailynews.com
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