Bernard Madoff’s former operations chief testified Tuesday that he always trusted his boss, who “seemed to have the respect of the entire world” for decades, before Madoff admitted orchestrating a massive Ponzi scheme.

“Now, I think he’s a terribly ill man, and it’s difficult to reconcile everything I knew for 40 years and what I know now,” the former employee, Daniel Bonventre, said in Manhattan fedearl court under questioning by his attorney Andrew Frisch, a solo practitioner.