SEC Lawyer Linked to $1.5M in Dirty Madoff Money

The mother of the chief lawyer for the Securities and Exchange Commission reaped $1.5 million in dirty money from Bernie Madoff, court documents are revealing. Attorney David Becker has been named in a clawback lawsuit seeking funds to repay investors ripped off in Madoff's $65 billion Ponzi scheme. The apparent conflict of interest involving Becker raises troubling questions about the SEC's failure to stop Madoff earlier, despite a raft of warnings, notes the New York Daily News. "If families of high-ranking SEC officials were heavily invested in Madoff it may help explain why the SEC was less than vigilant in scrutinizing his activities," said a former federal prosecutor. "We know they were asleep at the switch."

Becker and his two brothers were named in the suit as executors of their late mother's estate, including the account she held with Madoff, which was liquidated. The "transfers to defendants totaling at least $1,544,494" were "fictitious profits from the Ponzi scheme," states the trustee for the scammed investors in court documents. The funds were "non-existent profits supposedly earned in the account, but in reality they were other people's money." An SEC spokesman insists Becker "had no involvement with his parents' financial affairs, and no recollection of his parents' account with Madoff prior to his mother's death." (More Bernard Madoff stories.)