A New York jury has heard how two former IT men employed by Bernard Madoff allegedly developed a raft of software programs to create fictitious transaction records designed to dupe auditors inspecting the company's books.
During testimony, Richard Dietrich, a senior technician at IBM appearing as an expert witness for the prosecution said the defendants, Jerome O'Hara and George Perez, wrote special software code to generate bogus transaction numbers, dates and time stamps to cover over the cracks in Madoff's $17 billion Ponzi scheme.
Dietrich, who helped to develop the AS/400 computer system used by Madoff, said the programs were designed to assign random international banks as counterparties to fake trades and make false Depository Trust Co. statements. One program generated random time stamps at 15-minute intervals during London trading hours, Dietrich told the jury.
Prosecutors claim O'Hara and Perez got wind of the fraud in 2006 and used the damning information to extort higher salaries and bonus payments from Madoff in return for their complicity.
The two men have both pleaded not guilty.