The Financial Post reports in its Thursday edition that convicted Ponzi king Bernard Madoff's former inner circle is running out of options. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post says that a federal Appeals Court in New York has upheld the fraud convictions of five of his former aides, leaving the U.S. Supreme Court as their last hope for reversal based in part on claims of racial bias by a black prosecutor. The court rejected claims that former Assistant U.S. Attorney Randall Jackson had gone too far with references to the civil rights movement and racial equality just minutes before a jury composed of minorities began deliberating on the fate of the defendants, who are white. The court also tossed aside claims that the government lacked enough evidence at trial. "The evidence we presented over nearly six months of trial demonstrated that each of the five defendants was a 'vital' and 'integral' member of Madoff's scheme," said prosecutor Matthew Schwartz. The ruling, handed down less than a month after the panel heard arguments, signals that prosecutors have wide latitude in the way they speak to juries, draw analogies and point to faults in their counterpart's arguments, even if judges are critical of their language.