[JURIST] A federal jury in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York [official website] on Monday returned a guilty verdict for five former associates of Bernard Madoff [JURIST news archive] on charges they aided and profited from the Ponzi scheme that defrauded billions of dollars from investors. The former co-workers include: ex-director of operations Daniel Bonventre, former executive assistant Annette Bongiorno, ex-manager of company bank accounts JoAnn Crupi, and computer programmers Jerome O’Hara and George Perez. The five-month trial [Reuters report] was the first criminal trial resulting from the 2008 Madoff Ponzi scheme and the defendants will be sentenced in late July. The jury rejected the defendants’ central argument that only Madoff was aware of the fraud and they found the co-workers knowingly [NYT report] aided in the financial conspiracy.

Legal action continues from the fallout of the 2008 Madoff Ponzi scheme. In January a federal judge approved a settlement [JURIST reports] between the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York [official website] and JPMorgan Chase over the bank’s failure to report internal suspicions regarding Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. In September 2013 a judge for the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York [official website] ruled [JURIST report] that victims can only recover the principal amount invested without accounting for inflation over the past five years and excluding interest. Last April a judge for the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit [official website] rejected a suit [JURIST report] by victims against the US Securities and Exchange Commission [official website].