Yesterday Frank DiPascali, one of Bernie Madoff's closest aides since the mid-1970s, pled guilty to 10 felony counts and in the process offered up details on how he helped Madoff screw hundreds with their multi-billion dollar swindle.


DiPascali said while unidentified others within the Madoff organization created fake account statements, he shuffled money between bank accounts to cover up the massive fraud. Reports the New York Times:

"No purchases or sales of securities were actually taking place in their accounts," Mr. DiPascali said. "It was all fake. It was all fictitious. It was wrong, and I knew it was wrong at the time."

And, from his account, keeping the scheme afloat and investors and regulators duped was a full-time job. To give the appearance that Mr. Madoff's firm had mastered the markets, Mr. Madoff and his employees would track stock prices and then simply pretend to buy stocks whose trajectories matched the firm's investment goals, Mr. DiPascali said.

They created and mailed out reams of account statements and trading slips for trades that had never taken place. Prosecutors said that the ruse extended as far as designing a fake computer stock-trading platform and using a random-number generator to assign times and amounts to trade records, so that no one would detect any pattern.

The judge in the case, likely fearing he'd use cash hidden in offshore accounts to sip champagne and nail teenage hookers, refused to grant bail to DiPascali pending his sentencing, despite requests from prosecutors that he remain free to help them in their investigations. He faces up to 125 years in prison.

Now, who the hell are the "unidentified others" who were in on the scheme? Ruth?!