Madoff's chief financial officer set to plead guilty

NEW YORK -- The next chapter in Bernard Madoff's Ponzi crime scheme saga is expected to begin Tuesday with the scheduled guilty plea of Frank DiPascali, a longtime top lieutenant of the imprisoned financier.

DiPascali, the chief financial officer of Madoff's Manhattan-based business, will waive his right to have a grand jury file an indictment against him and will plead guilty to a criminal information to be filed by prosecutors, U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin's office disclosed in court filings Friday.

The prosecutors did not disclose the charges against DiPascali, one of several people in Madoff's inner circle of relatives and employees who have been the focus of investigation in the massive scam that victimized charities, celebrities, financial funds and average investors worldwide.

Rachel Silverman, a spokeswoman for DiPascali defense attorney Marc Mukasey, declined to comment, as did prosecutors.

With a guilty plea, DiPascali would join Madoff, who's now serving a 150-year prison term, and David Friehling, the accountant for the former money manager, as the only people criminally charged in the scam so far.

Suspects typically waive indictment by a grand jury, eliminating the need for a trial, when they have reached pre-arranged plea-bargain deals with prosecutors. The pleas sometimes require a defendant to provide information about other suspects.

Although Madoff repeatedly claimed he acted alone, investigators have been reluctant to accept that he would have been able to run the decades-long scam without assistance.

DiPascali hailed from the same southeastern area of Queens County, N.Y., as Madoff, and had worked with the former Nasdaq chairman for decades.

He had an active role in calming the concerns of one of the largest feeder funds to Madoff's business, the Fairfield Greenwich Group, a corporate client that invested $7.2 billion, according to a complaint filed last spring by Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin.