The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday accused Beverly Hills money manager Stanley Chais and four others of securities fraud, alleging that they collectively raised billions of dollars from investors for Bernard L. Madoff's Ponzi scheme. The SEC alleged that Chais 'held himself out as an investing wizard,' managing hundreds of millions of dollars in investor funds, when he was actually an unsophisticated investor who did nothing more than turn the assets over to Madoff, while charging more than $250 million in fees for his services. In addition, Chais, his family members and related entities withdrew in excess of $500 million more than they actually invested with Madoff, the SEC alleged in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Chais' attorney, Eugene Licker, has insisted that Chais had no knowledge of the Madoff Ponzi scheme and that Chais, his family and charitable foundation lost significant amounts of money in it. Licker could not be reached immediately on Monday to discuss the lawsuit. The SEC lawsuit seeks financial penalties and a court order instructing Chais and the other defendants to return their ill-gotten gains to investors. Also accused Monday by the SEC were Cohmad Securities Corp., Chairman Maurice J. Cohn, Chief Operating Officer Marcia B. Cohn and representative Robert M. Jaffe for actively marketing investment opportunities with Madoff while disregarding evidence that Madoff's operation was a fraud. 'Madoff cultivated an air of exclusivity by pretending that he was too successful to trouble himself with marketing to new investors,' said Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement. 'In fact, he needed a constant in-flow of funds to sustain his fraud and used his secret control of Cohmad to obtain them.' 