NEW YORK (AP) — Imprisoned financier Bernard Madoff’s longtime secretary defended herself from the witness stand Monday, telling a Manhattan jury about a 40-year career working unwittingly alongside a historic Ponzi scheme that began when she recognized through Madoff’s stutter on her first day that he wanted a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch.

“He gave me a thumbs up and said: ‘You’ll do really good here,'” Annette Bongiorno recalled as she became the second defendant to testify among five defendants charged with helping Madoff cheat thousands of investors of nearly $20 billion. She said she could figure out what Madoff wanted through his stutter because a family member had one, too.