Let it be known: one man alone cannot pull off the largest Ponzi scheme in history, swindling investors across the country out of $20 billion.

After what has been one of the longest trials in Manhattan federal court history, five people who worked closely with Madoff stood in front of a jury this afternoon for conviction. Four of were convicted with 33 charges each including conspiracy to defraud clients, securities fraud, falsifying the books and records of a broker dealer. The fifth faced a smaller list of charges.

The jury deliberated for roughly 20 hours over a period of two weeks before reaching their verdicts.

For six months now, prosecutors from U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's office have been providing the jury with hundreds of exhibits and interviews to build cases against Annette Bongiorno, Daniel Bonventre, JoAnn Crupi, Jerome O'Hara and George Perez. The attorneys had to prove to the jury that these five Madoff cronies knowingly participated in their boss' wildly expensive game of bait and switch, and lift a finger to stop it. In order to do so, Frank DiPascali, Madoff's finance chief who now faces 125 years in prison, and five other moles pleaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for cooperating with the government.

The players' roles in the pyramid scheme varied. Bongiorno, for one, was Madoff's secretary, and, along with Cupri, was charged with fabricating account statements to throw off the SEC (like roughing up audits in the refrigerator). With a position like the director of operations for investments, Bonventure had to know what was going on, while O'Hara and Perez, on the other hand, acted as the computer programmers behind software that basically digitized the pyramid.

Although her lawyer argued that Bongiorno was duped by Madoff, it's reported that she asked Bernie at the time why is it the firm was "making money when everyone else was losing money." And then clients lost upwards of $20 billion, and the party of five all received fat bonuses worth tens of millions of dollars. Madoff even gave Cupri a beach house worth $2.5 million (yes, we'll go there).

Cupri reportedly looked "shocked" as the verdict was read.