Defendant Admitted to Creating Fake Trades Beginning in the Early 1970s
Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that DAVID L. KUGEL, a former senior trader in the Market Making and Proprietary Trading operations of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (“BLMIS”), pled guilty today in Manhattan federal court to a six-count Superseding Information related to his conduct while employed at BLMIS. KUGEL admitted that, beginning in the early 1970s, he helped create fake, backdated trades for the purpose of defrauding BLMIS’s Investment Advisory (“IA”) clients.
KUGEL pled guilty today before U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain to two counts of conspiracy, as well as substantive counts of securities fraud, falsifying books and records of a broker-dealer, falsifying books and records of an investment adviser, and bank fraud.
In addition to pleading guilty, KUGEL agreed to cooperate with the Government in its ongoing investigation of the fraud that occurred at BLMIS.
