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An SEC official dated and later married the niece of confessed fraudster Bernard Madoff, and the agency is investigating the link, reports the Wall Street Journal. Eric Swanson, an SEC director of compliance who left the agency, married Shana Madoff, a compliance lawyer at Madoff's firm, last year, but began dating her in 2006. Madoff bragged of his "very close" relationship with an SEC regulator last year, crowing that "my niece even married one," reports ABC News.
A spokesman for Swanson, who left the SEC in 2006, denied that he participated in any inquiry into Madoff's business during his relationship with Shana Madoff. The match, however, will be part of the SEC's probe into how officials failed to miss Madoff's fraud, despite warnings stretching back to the '90s. An SEC official said that Swanson worked on Madoff reviews in 1999 and 2004, but did not participate in the 2005 review after his personal relationship developed.