Two computer programmers who once worked for Bernard Madoff’s firm have been arrested and charged with giving Madoff the technical capacity to run his Ponzi scheme.

Jerome O’Hara and George Perez have been charged with conspiracy and falsifying records. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which filed separate civil charges against the men, said they provided the technical support needed to keep Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme going, including the production of phony trading records.

“Without the help of O’Hara and Perez, the Madoff fraud would not have been possible,” George Canellos, head of the SEC’s New York office, said. “They used their special computer skills to create sophisticated, credible and entirely phony trading records that were critical to the success of Madoff’s scheme for so many years.”

According to prosecutors, O’Hara and Perez’s systems created books that helped mask the scope of Madoff’s fraud, as well as changing the names of account holders to keep the SEC from finding securities they claimed were custodied at the Depositary Trust Co. In addition, their programs allegedly created reams of phony and bogus documents, from fake order entry and execution reports to falsified client statements.

The two programmers are the fourth and fifth people charged in the Madoff case, following Madoff himself and his CFO and auditor. All three have pleaded guilty to fraud charges. Madoff is serving 150 years in prison for masterminding the scheme; the other two await sentencing.

O’Hara and Perez each face up to 30 years in prison if convicted of all charges.