NEW YORK — Former Bernard Madoff Investment Securities trader David Kugel is expected to plead guilty to fraud charges next week for creating fake trades as far back as the 1970s to deceive investors, prosecutors said.
According to a letter from United States Attorney Preet Bharara to U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain, Kugel will plead guilty at his hearing Monday to securities fraud, falsifying broker-dealer records and bank fraud; a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 50 years. His guilty plea is one of the stipulations of a deal with federal prosecutors, the letter said.
Kugel is cooperating with the government in an ongoing investigation of Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme, which was thought to have begun in the 1990s, prosecutors said. Bernard Madoff is currently serving a 150-year sentence in North Carolina for his orchestral role in the scheme.
Kugel was a supervisory trader at Madoff’s firm and among the many former employees sued in 2010 by investors to recover $70 million improperly withdrawn from the company, according to Reuters. He is charged with defrauding investors up until December of 2008.
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