Longtime Madoff Trader Pleads Guilty and Settles SEC Fraud Charges

The SEC charged David Kugel, a longtime Bernie Madoff employee, with fraud for his role in creating fake trades to facilitate the massive Ponzi scheme.  According to the SEC, Kugel, who worked at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (BMIS) for nearly four decades, was asked by Madoff to provide the firm’s investment advisory operations with backdated arbitrage trade information to be formulated into fictitious trading on investors’ account statements. Kugel’s own account at BMIS was among those in which backdated trades were entered, and he withdrew nearly $10 million in “profits” from the fictitious trading over several years.  Kugel's illegal activities began sometime in the early 1970s.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has filed parallel criminal charges against Kugel, who has pled guilty and also agreed to settle the SEC’s civil charges. Subject to court approval, the civil case will result in a permanent injunction against Kugel, who must forfeit his ill-gotten monetary gains upon entry of a criminal forfeiture order in the criminal case.