[5] Cohmad had fewer than 650 client accounts, and made 99.7% of its sales from brokerage services to Madoff's larger broker-dealer.
In its audited financial statements for the 12 months ending June 30, 2008, Cohmad said revenue from Madoff Securities totaled $3,736,829.
Between 1996 and 2008, Jaffe withdrew at least $150 million, and the SEC claims he was aware Madoff was engaged in fictitious trading.
[8][9] On January 14, 2009, William Galvin, Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth, who is in charge of the state's securities issues, filed suit against Jaffe, a Cohmad broker for Madoff, who promoted Madoff's funds to wealthy investors in Massachusetts and Florida.
It also cited $526,000 in referral fees paid from Madoff Investments, to Cohmad, to Vienna Bank Medici majority owner, Sonja Kohn, which she subsequently denied.
[16] On June 22, 2009, Madoff Trustee, Irving Picard filed a claim against Cohmad, founder Maurice “Sonny” Cohn, daughter Marcia Cohn, Robert Jaffe, Richard Spring, Alvin J. Delaire, Jr., Stanley Mervin Berman, Jonathan Greenberg, Cyril Jalon, Morton Kurzrok, and Rosalie Buccellato, among more than two dozen individuals and trusts in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.
[17] The lawsuit claims that up to 90 percent of Cohmad’s income came from referring clients and that the firm had a “symbiotic” relationship with Madoff, having earned hundreds of millions of dollars from the fraud.
Cohmad representatives were paid for funds they brought into the firm but not for any putative increase in the investments' value.