Bernie Madoff's former Chief Financial Officer, Frank DiPascali, dies from Lung Cancer less than a month before facing sentence for his role on the multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme.
After spending his final years cooperating with the federal government, the 58-year-old who aided U.S in revealing one of the biggest frauds in Wall Street History, died Thursday of Lung Cancer.
DiPascali, who assisted in the $17.5 billion scheme, was scheduled to appear in court this June and was assumed to get credit for pleading guilty and testifying against the Madoff Five.
"He was grateful to have been able to make some amends by helping the government these past few years," DiPascali's lawyer Marc Mukasey said in an emailed statement on Sunday.
The ex-finance chief was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer two months ago, and even though Mukasey did not mention the cause of death of Frank DiPascali, sources close to the case conclude that it was because of this illness.
DiPascali who joined Madoff Securities in 1975 and became Madoff's right-hand man, admitted his 20 years of assistance to the vast financial fraud.
In his court testimony in 2009, DiPascali confessed that he, Madoff, and other people were all aware that the account statements which showed the firm's transaction to the clients were fake.
He was the highest-ranking Bernie Madoff worker who testified in the prosecution convicting 5 other defendants: Joann Crupi, who was in-charge of the big accounts; Annette Bongiorno, who was in-charge of the investment advisory unit; Daniel Bonventre, the company's ex-operations chief; and computer programmers Jerome O'Hara and George Perez, who allegedly altered the fake account statements and trade confirmations. Madoff on the other hand, pleaded guilty to fraud charges in March 2009.
Despite DiPascali's major involvement in the scheme, Mathew L. Schwarts, one of the prosecutors, still acknowledged his collaboration in the investigation saying: "Although his crimes were inexcusable and caused many people to suffer, I have rarely seen someone commit so completely to cooperating with the government."
DiPascali shed most of the light in one of the biggest financial schemes. Though none of it would entirely make up for his crimes, it still gave a tiny dose of redemption to his name; because the Madoff five and others involved would not have been convicted without his testimony.
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