Bernie Madoff: Links to Madoff SEC Financial Docs
Bernard L. Madoff International Securities LLC (BMIS) filed complete audited financial statements annually with the SEC. The BMIS income and cash flow statements are not available online but the the statements of financial condition for the fiscal years ended October 31, 2002, 2003, 2004 , 2005, 2006 and 2007 are posted here. (The statement of financial condition is an abbreviated balance sheet.)
The notes to the 2005 statement of financial condition are missing or were not filed with the SEC. The 2005 statement would have been the most recent one available during the SEC's 2006 investigation which makes the case of the missing notes a bit more significant.
On every transmittal sheet, Enrica Cotellessa Pitz, BMIS controller, is listed as the contact person and Friehling & Horowitz is listed as the certified public accounting firm. David Friehling, of course, is the CPA who was charged yesterday on numerous counts of fraud in connection with the Madoff scandal.
Ms. Pitz is not a certified public accountant nor was she an officer of BMIS. She has not been charged with any crimes to date.
The BMIS 13F-HR statements are available online here. These are quarterly statements listing equities held by the a firm at the end of a quarter.
I believe BMIS was required to provide annual financial statements to the investors but to date, no one has made any of the statements available online as far as I know.
Thanks for this excellent resource. Appreciated.
March 19, 2009 9:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
You guys never talk to me. Are you writing a book or not. And I do not even know if you are two guys or a mommy.
At any rate, I never miss this. At least not intentionally.
March 19, 2009 10:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Have you seen Lucinda Franks' bombshell blog article at the Daily Beast? It's a bit rough but it does make it look like the lid is coming off the can of worms.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-19/madoff-employee-breaks-silence/
March 19, 2009 11:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
DDay - I have too responded to you and you know darned well those two guys are Abramoff and DeLay.
Book? About what? Being the first person online to conjecture about Frank Dipascali's Howard Beach background based on a Reunion.com profile?
EDS - I read the article ten minutes after I posted here and a big thanks to Lucinda Franks for finding a Madoff employee willing to talk about what some of us suspected. An even bigger thanks to the ex-employee!
I had been dying to know whether the 17th floor staff socialized with the rest of the firm so finding out Frank the Ginzo went to the Montauk soirees was great news.
I wish I knew who went out to lunch together. Annette Bongiorno, market maven, worked there 40 years and she doesn't strike me as an introvert.
I'd also like to see Charles Wiener's personnel files and organizational charts. How the heck did he describe Annette's position? Wiener is Bernie's sister's nephew.
Interesting the ex-employee and his fellow staffers were busting into the Madoff's secret files while being paid handsome salaries. He didn't mention whether the financial data for the investing arm was stored there, did he?
The ex-employee claims the brokerage business could have been a real moneymaker and grossed $40 to $50 million in some years. Based on the change in retained earnings from year to year in the statements of financial condition, BMIS was netting $30 to $60 million annually. But I don't think the cost of the London office is included.
Letting Andrew and Mark off the hook because they were "nice" guys underscores one of the problems I think the Feds face. I bet it is hard for them to believe seemingly very nice people came to work for twenty years or more knowing their boss was a crook.
Me, I think they all knew something was wrong about the 17th floor. I bet "house of cards" was a common expression around the office.
In one way, I feel sorry for the employees. No matter what happens, they will always be known as "oven stuffers".
I'm thinking of doing a post on "That Madoff Moment". A "when did it hit you that you would have to be a moron to believe the lone gunman theory" kind of thing.
My favorite headline is still the NYT's 12/15/08 "Inquiry Finds No Signs Madoff Family Aided Madoff".
"But employees of the firm have said that Mr. Madoff’s sons and brother all seemed shocked on Thursday after the fraud was disclosed..."
Five days after Bernie "exposed" himself, the NYT let the rest of the Madoffs off the hook in a 30 year-old $50 billion fraud. That's when I first suspected the fix was in long before December 10, 2008.
March 20, 2009 12:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
The shadow office is also interesting. I wonder if it was actually used as a kind of secret control room (vs. the ostensible emergency back-up plan as presented).
This was the first I had noted a mention of ANY employees on the 17th floor (not that I'd been paying really close attention). I had thought the 17th floor was basically a small suite occupied solely by Bernie. If there WERE employees, I cannot see how they didn't know they were engaged in a criminal enterprise. The article alleges something like this. If so, how come there hasn't been headline level disclosure about the alleged 17th floor employees (named or not) and their roles?
Franks' story doesn't quite ring true to me, but that said, the tip of an iceberg is often dirty even though there is a real iceberg too.
March 20, 2009 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder if the backup facility had 15-year old computers and dot matrix printers to generate fake statements.
Bloomberg's articles about Frank Dipascali and Annette Bongiorno are online here and here provide details about the employees on the 17th floor.
A Wall Street Journal article confirmed two 17th floor employees testified they were instructed to generate fake trading tickets by Bongirono who picked stocks from the newspaper.
March 21, 2009 10:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
The backup facility was listed on the Madoff.com website:
BCP Facility
75-20 Astoria Boulvard
Queens NY, 11370
Trading: 718-533-2300
Client Services Desk: 718-533-2335
March 21, 2009 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
From the Madoff.com website circa 2002:
March 21, 2009 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink