New City, NY – The auditor for Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, whose namesake was charged in a $50 billion Ponzi scheme last week, is under investigation by the district attorney in New York’s Rockland County, a northern suburb of New York City.
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The New City, New York, auditing firm Friehling & Horowitz signed off on the annual financial statement of Madoff’s Manhattan-based investment advisory business through Oct. 31, 2006, according to a copy obtained by Bloomberg News.
Madoff was charged by federal prosecutors in Manhattan and sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Dec. 11. He told senior employees that the firm was insolvent and “had been for years,” prosecutors said in the criminal complaint. David Friehling, whose name is on the door to the store-front accounting office, hasn’t been charged.
“We’re trying to determine if there have been any state crimes here,” Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe said in a telephone interview today. “When you have a key player like that operating in your county, you have to look.”
Friehling didn’t return calls for comment.
Zugibe said, among other things, he was probing to see whether any other Rockland-based businesses or other organizations might be affected.
“The implication is pretty broad,” Zugibe said.
Friehling is on the board of the JCC Rockland, a Jewish center in the county. He also is a past-president and a current board member of the Rockland chapter of the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants.
“Let’s get the jews, they cause all this ruin” is not far off.
Germany in the 1930’s, not far off.
many heimishe people will lose their job if this place closes. GEVALD!!!!
It has nothing to do with the fact that he is Jewish. He was the accountant that signed off on the business. If he were a Gentile he also would be investigated.
maybe the hechsher tzedek group will come out against the jcc of rockland county—not~!!
he was the president and a member of the board of certified accountants. show him the respect he deserve
Seems that the media has already tried and convicted David Friehling. He has not even had the opportunity to give his side of the story, which I am sure he will do in the appropriate forum, such as a courthouse or Grand Jury, not in the Rockland Journal News. We have an obligation to at least listen to him without jumping to conclusions. By the way, the papers are calling his office a “hole in the wall in a run-down strip mall”. His office is in a well kept professional condo, not in a strip mall.