The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged a 30-year employee of Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities with falsifying internal records.

Enrica Cotellessa-Pitz, a former controller of the firm, allegedly assisted in falsifying BLMIS’s internal accounting records to misclassify hundreds of millions of dollars of income as having been generated by its investment advisory operations. She is also charged with falsifying financial statements filed with the SEC and other regulators, and materials to deceive regulators and tax auditors.

According to the Commission’s complaint filed in the Southern District of New York, Cotellessa-Pitz “played a central role in falsifying these records” under direction by Bernard Madoff and David Bonventre, the former director of operations at the fraudulent firm. Bonventre has already been charged by the regulator with falsifying books and records to hide and obfuscate Madoff’s advisory operations.

The aim by Madoff, who had instructed employees to transfer investor funds from bank holding accounts to the firm’s operating accounts, was to artificially improve the reported revenue and income of the business. Acting under instruction, Cotellessa-Pitz falsely accounted for these transfers as adjustments to certain securities positions on BLMIS’s stock record, according to the Commission. She then used these to overstate trading income from certain business operations.

The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has also filed parallel criminal charges and Cotellessa-Pitz has pleaded guilty. She has also consented to the entry of a partial judgment in the SEC’s civil case against her which, subject to court approval, will impose a permanent injunction against her and require a penalty plus disgorgement of all ill-gotten gains.