NEW YORK – The government has given its fullest accounting yet of the 2008 collapse of Wall Street swindler's Bernard Madoff's firm after a four-decade fraud.
The latest indictment against five ex-Madoff officers describes Madoff's company as a place where at least a dozen people conspired to cheat thousands of investors out of billions of dollars.
It says the employees were rewarded with millions of dollars as the firm's bank accounts dwindled to less than a billion dollars.
The government says the end came just days after one employee confided to another that Madoff had told him his firm was broke and client accounts had no value.
A lawyer for one defendant says he thinks the street-corner conversation helps her defense because it shows she needed to be told there was a fraud.
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