Dead Madoff Executive Blamed for Deceptive Computer Code

Bernard Madoff’s former chief information officer, who died 10 months before the con man’s arrest, was responsible for the company’s deceptive computer code and related projects, not two ex-programmers on trial, a defense lawyer told jurors.

Liz Weintraub, the former boss of defendants Jerome O’Hara and George Perez, helped write and develop Madoff’s computer code more than a decade before the men were hired and oversaw programs to create fake reports and delete company e-mails as Madoff’s $17 billion Ponzi scheme grew, the lawyer, Gordon Mehler, said in his closing statement today in the trial of five former Madoff aides.