Madoff related...

"Accountant for Madoff Is Arrested and Charged With Securities Fraud "

Joseph M. Demarest Jr., the head of the New York F.B.I. office, said that Mr. Friehling, betraying his fiduciary duty to investors and his legal obligation to regulators, did little or no testing or verification of the records he was hired to certify as an independent auditor.

“His job was not merely to rubber-stamp statements he didn’t verify,” Mr. Demarest said. “Simply put, Friehling failed to do his job and lied to investors and regulators in saying he did.”

The civil complaint by the S.E.C., in addition to citing the deceptive audits, accused Mr. Friehling of collecting “ill-gotten gains” in the form of substantial audit fees ― about $186,000 a year ― from the Madoff enterprise and millions of dollars taken from accounts he and his family maintained with Mr. Madoff.

According to the S.E.C., Mr. Friehling and his family had more than $14 million in their Madoff accounts by last November and had taken more than $5.5 million from them since 2000. People who knew them said Mr. Friehling and Mr. Horowitz had lost substantial sums.

Mr. Friehling “essentially sold his license to Madoff for more than 17 years while Madoff’s Ponzi scheme went undetected,” said James Clarkson, acting director of the S.E.C.’s office in New York.

マドロフの会計士が捕まったそうです。