NEW YORK (AP) Five ex-employees of imprisoned financier Bernard Madoff aided him in history's biggest Ponzi scheme by helping to "perpetuate Madoff's elaborate fiction," generating millions of pages of fake documents over three decades to fool thousands of investors, government regulators and financial institutions, a prosecutor told jurors at a criminal trial Wednesday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Schwartz introduced the government's case to newly sworn-in jurors in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where the trial was expected to last about five months.
Schwartz pointed at each defendant as he explained that it would be impossible to fool thousands of investors all alone, as Madoff had claimed when he pleaded guilty to fraud charges in 2009. He is serving a 150-year prison sentence.
"These are the people who helped him do it," Schwartz said. "Bernie Madoff needed help to fool so many people for so long."
He added: "A fraud of this size and scope and duration could not have been carried out alone."