Both the criminal and civil complaints against Mr. Friehling cover 1991 through 2008, which roughly matches the timing of events Mr. Madoff provided last week when he pleaded guilty to 11 felony counts.

But federal prosecutors and market regulators have consistently said that Mr. Madoff’s fraud began much earlier, at least by the 1980s. In that decade, the Madoff businesses were audited by Mr. Horowitz, who died at age 80 on March 12, the day Mr. Madoff pleaded guilty. The disputed chronology affects the fight over how much of the profits of Mr. Madoff’s legitimate business, wholesale stock trading, can be linked to his crime — and, therefore, claimed by the government under criminal forfeiture laws.

Photo

In court filings, prosecutors have said they intend to seek $170 billion in forfeited assets in the Madoff case, a figure the defense disputes.

The charges against Mr. Friehling are the first filed publicly since Mr. Madoff, 70, pleaded guilty. Mr. Madoff’s crimes carry a potential prison term of 150 years. After the plea, Judge Denny Chin of Federal District Court ordered him jailed to await sentencing in June.

At a hearing scheduled for Thursday morning, Mr. Madoff’s lawyers will try to persuade an appeals court panel in Manhattan to reverse Judge Chin and grant bail.

People briefed on the matter said they expected more cases to be filed as prosecutors and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, ignoring Mr. Madoff’s assertion that he acted alone, continue to focus on Madoff family members and employees.

As part of that investigation, Mr. Horowitz was interviewed fairly recently by federal investigators, one person briefed on the matter said.

Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.

Mr. Friehling, 49, is facing one count of securities fraud, one count of aiding and abetting investment adviser fraud, and four counts of making false S.E.C. filings. If convicted on all six counts, he faces up to 105 years in prison.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

Mr. Friehling’s lawyer, Andrew M. Lankler, declined to comment.

Joseph M. Demarest Jr., the head of the New York F.B.I. office, said that Mr. Friehling, betraying his fiduciary duty to investors and his legal obligation to regulators, did little or no testing or verification of the records he was hired to certify as an independent auditor.

“His job was not merely to rubber-stamp statements he didn’t verify,” Mr. Demarest said. “Simply put, Friehling failed to do his job and lied to investors and regulators in saying he did.”

Photo

The civil complaint by the S.E.C., in addition to citing the deceptive audits, accused Mr. Friehling of collecting “ill-gotten gains” in the form of substantial audit fees — about $186,000 a year — from the Madoff enterprise and millions of dollars taken from accounts he and his family maintained with Mr. Madoff.

According to the S.E.C., Mr. Friehling and his family had more than $14 million in their Madoff accounts by last November and had taken more than $5.5 million from them since 2000. People who knew them said Mr. Friehling and Mr. Horowitz had lost substantial sums.

Mr. Friehling “essentially sold his license to Madoff for more than 17 years while Madoff’s Ponzi scheme went undetected,” said James Clarkson, acting director of the S.E.C.’s office in New York.

The criminal complaint, sworn out by an F.B.I. special agent, Keith D. Kelly, says that Mr. Friehling “caused false and misleading” certified year-end audits to be filed with the S.E.C. from 2004 through 2007.

Some of Mr. Madoff’s critics have contended that the tiny accounting firm he used was a red flag, given the size of Mr. Madoff’s legitimate operations.

After the fraud was discovered, a list of past and current customers of Mr. Madoff assembled by a court-appointed trustee showed more than 100 accounts attributed to Mr. Friehling, and 17 more attributed to the accounting firm he shared with Mr. Horowitz.

Someone who identified himself as Mr. Horowitz’s son, Irwin, posted a poem about his father on the day of his death on a Web site called Newwest.net. The poem called Mr. Horowitz “a decent, honorable man” and described how the fraud has affected the family.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

“The irony that Bernard Madoff pled guilty to 11 counts of fraud, perjury and money laundering on this day is beyond measure,” Irwin Horowitz wrote. “My father’s passing has become part of this great American tragedy. He served as Mr. Madoff’s auditor for over three decades, before handing it off to my brother-in-law. He never suspected the crime that was happening.”