Naming Names: Judge Alledges JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) Execs Knew About Madoff

CNNMoney.com is reporting that the federal bankruptcy court judge presiding over the Bernard Madoff case has revealed the JPMorgan Chase (JPM) employees who allegedly suspected they were doing business with a Ponzi schemer.

JPMorgan employees John Hogan and Matt Zames suspected that Madoff was operating a scam long before his December 2008 arrest, according to a lawsuit filed by Irving Picard, the trustee appointed by U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York.

The updated document opens with this quote, which is attributed to Hogan, chief risk officer for JPMorgan: “For whatever it[‘s] worth, I am sitting at lunch with Matt Zames who just told me that there is a well-known cloud over the head of Madoff and that his returns are speculated to be part of a [P]onzi scheme.”

Hogan allegedly made this statement in June 2007, according to the documents. That’s about a year and a half before Madoff was arrested for orchestrating the largest, longest-running pyramid scheme in history. Madoff pleaded guilty in 2009 and is currently serving a 150-year sentence at a federal prison in North Carolina.

Hogan and Zames, a senior member of the firm, still work at JPMorgan, according to company spokesman Joe Evangelisti, who called any assertions that the executives or JPMorgan knew about the fraud “patently false.”

“We are confident that we have strong defenses to the claims brought by the Madoff trustee and look forward to asserting those defenses in court,” Evangelisti said in an e-mail statement.

CNNMoney initially reported the Hogan quote back in February, but with the names omitted. On Thursday, the court publicized the updated documents identifying Hogan and Zames.

The release of the names is the result of an April 12 order from U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Burton Lifland to reveal the formerly redacted names of employees of financial firms in lawsuits related to Madoff. These firms include Citibank (C, Fortune 500), which was sued for $425 million in December, as well as Tremont Group Holdings and Reliance International Research.

The trustee sued JPMorgan in December for $6.4 billion and accused the firm of profiting off Madoff’s scheme. That includes nearly $1 billion in “fees and profits” and $5.4 billion in damages, according to the lawsuit, which accused JPMorgan of having a “decades-long role as [Madoff’s] primary banker, aiding and abetting Madoff’s fraud.”

The trustee has also sued HSBC (HBC) for $9 billion and UBS (UBS) for $2 billion.