Shana Madoff

Shana Diane Madoff (born December 8, 1967), sometimes referred to as Shana Madoff Skoller Swanson, is an American former attorney who is now a yoga teacher.

Shana Diane Madoff was born in Queens, New York, in 1967, and grew up in Woodbury on the North Shore of Long Island.

She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1992, and from Fordham Law School in 1995.

She is the daughter of Peter Madoff, and a niece of Bernie Madoff, who employed her as a compliance officer and attorney at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities (BLMIS) from 1995 until 2008.

After her graduation from law school in 1995, Shana Madoff started work at her uncle's firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities (BLMIS).

She was a rules and compliance officer and in-house counsel at BLMIS, a significant senior officer position for which she collected millions of dollars.

She was responsible for ensuring that BLMIS complied with its legal and regulatory obligations, signing documents assuring the SEC that BLMIS's business records were truthful and accurate.

In one case, she signed documents certifying to the SEC that the firm's investment advisory business, in which the fraud was occurring, had 23 clients and $17.1 billion under management, when in fact it had 4,900 customers with $68 billion in investments.

Shana Madoff was also a compliance officer and attorney for Cohmad Securities, which was co-owned by her uncle and helped bring investors to BLMIS.

Shana Madoff also held prominent positions in investment industry organizations.

In 1997 she married Scott Skoller, a men's clothing store manager from Roslyn, New York, and changed her name to Shana Skoller.

She and Swanson met originally in April 2003 when the SEC performed an inadequate examination as to whether Bernie Madoff was front running customer orders—completely missing the multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that her own cousins (Bernie's sons) would expose in December 2008.

No criminal charges have ever been filed against her regarding her role at BLMIS.

She is married to Eric Swanson, an attorney and a former Assistant Director of the Office of Compliance Investigations and Examinations at the SEC, the securities regulator, whom she met in April 2003.

She and Swanson met during an SEC examination of whether Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, and the two started a regular correspondence; during 2003, Swanson sent Peter Madoff several regulatory requests.

In March 2004, SEC lawyer Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot was reviewing Madoff's firm and raised questions to Swanson (who was her boss's supervisor) about unusual trading at one of the Madoff funds; she was told to instead concentrate on an unrelated matter.

Swanson and Walker-Lightfoot’s boss asked for her research, but did not act upon it.

She served on the Executive Committee of the Compliance & Legal Division of the Securities Industry Association, which merged with another industry organization to become SIFMA, the lobbying arm of the industry, in November 2006.

She then became an active member of the Executive Committee of SIFMA's Compliance & Legal Division, while her father served on SIFMA's board of directors.

She resigned that position after her uncle's arrest.

Subsequent to the Ponzi scheme in the Madoff investment scandal becoming public, a spokesman for Shana Madoff said she had "no prior knowledge of the horrific fraud perpetuated."

In February 2006, Swanson was emailed by Assistant Director John Nee that the SEC’s New York Regional Office was investigating a complaint that Bernard Madoff might be running "the biggest Ponzi scheme ever".

In April 2006, Swanson informed John McCarthy, Associate Director in the SEC Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, of his relationship with Shana Madoff, and McCarthy was very upset.

When McCarthy found out later that month that the relationship was still continuing, and confronted Swanson about it, Swanson came clean and McCarthy was again extremely upset.

Swanson left the SEC on September 15, 2006.

The SEC closed its investigation of Bernie Madoff in 2006.

Swanson left the SEC on September 15, 2006.

Swanson and Shana Madoff became engaged on December 8, 2006.

In 2007, she married Eric Swanson, a former Assistant Director of the Office of Compliance Investigations and Examinations at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

In 2007, she married Eric Swanson, a former Assistant Director of the Office of Compliance Investigations and Examinations at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The September 2007 wedding of Shana Madoff and Swanson was attended by Lori Richards, SEC Director of Compliance Investigations and Examinations, who oversaw Swanson at the SEC.

In December 2008 BLMIS was discovered to be a $65 billion Ponzi scheme, and closed as part of the Madoff investment scandal.

Her uncle Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for the scheme, and her father, who was her boss at the company and the chief compliance officer, was sentenced to ten years in prison.

In 2008, Bernard Madoff spoke at a business roundtable meeting of his "very close" relationship with an SEC lawyer, and chuckled: "my niece even married one".

In 2009, after the scandal broke, SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz investigated, and concluded that there was no evidence that Swanson's romantic relationship with Shana Madoff influenced the closing of the SEC investigation of her uncle.

He did conclude, however, that: "Swanson's communication with Shana during the period of time he was engaged in a cause examination of her uncle and father's firm, created the appearance of a potential conflict of interest."

In April 2009, Richards recused herself from the Madoff investigation.

Swanson is now general counsel at BATS Trading, the third-largest U.S. stock exchange.

Shana Madoff's uncle Bernard pleaded guilty to federal charges against him, following the Madoff investment scandal becoming public, in March 2009.

In 2015, U.S. Marshals auctioned 420 lots of assets belonging to Shana Madoff and her father Peter, pursuant to a court order.