Madoff’s Secretary Could Be Released Early Under Jared’s Prison Reform Law
The longtime secretary of convicted financial schemer Bernard Madoff should be released early from prison, as her age qualifies her to benefit from the newly-passed prison reform law, her lawyer told the New York Daily News.
Annette Bongiorno should be released by March, after serving four years of her six-year prison sentence, according to her attorney Roland Riopelle.
Riopelle brought up the First Step Act, which gives judges the authority to release some prisoners to home confinement after serving two-thirds of a sentence. Her older age, at 70, also makes her eligible.
President Trump signed the bill into law last week. Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, received credit for his leadership and influence in getting it passed.
Bongiorno was one of five of Madoff’s employees convicted for their roles in his Ponzi scheme, in which thousands of investors lost billions of dollars. Without early release, she would sit in jail until May 1, 2020. Instead, she could spend the last year of her sentence in home confinement.
Manhattan federal prosecutors declined to comment to the Daily News.
Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO