On Dec. 11, 2008, news broke that Wall Street legend and former chairman of Nasdaq, Bernard Madoff, had been arrested for running a Ponzi scheme that was believed to be a $50 billion fraud. Almost immediately, federal prosecutors launched a criminal investigation into Madoff, his co-workers, and the operations of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC. Yesterday, Irwin Lipkin, a 77-year-old man who was the Madoff firm’s controller for over 30 years, was sentenced to six months in prison. Lipkin is the 15th — and final — defendant to be prosecuted in the Madoff case, which prosecutors have now reportedly wrapped up.
The biggest fish in the Madoff prosecution was, of course, Madoff himself. On June 29, 2009, after pleading guilty to 11 criminal counts in the massive scam, Madoff was sentenced to the maximum sentence of 150 years by U.S. Judge Denny Chin of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
