George Perez, a former computer programmer for Bernard Madoff who was convicted in March of aiding his boss' massive Ponzi scheme, got support from a noteworthy source this week: Madoff himself. In an email filed in Manhattan federal court by Perez's defense lawyers, Madoff described a meeting in which he said he told Perez and another programmer, Jerome O'Hara, that the trading at his firm was legitimate. "They (asked) if I was buying the securities that they showed on the reports," Madoff wrote from his North Carolina prison, where he is serving a 150-year sentence. "I answered, 'of course' and explained that I had trading and custodial arrangements with all the major investment banks in Europe and the U.S. who traded with us every day." In the filing, the lawyers argued that Madoff's description of the meeting undermined the government's thesis that Perez and O'Hara were aware the reports they were creating for outside auditors were based on fake trades. The two programmers
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