Sounds Familiar

This from a former Madoff employee:

He said that these businesses, the proprietary and market-making arms on the 18th and 19th floors of Madoff Securities, were designed to lure investors in, especially highly placed figures in society, and to fool the SEC into thinking that he had a large and impressive galaxy of businesses.

This applies to Goldman, Morgan, ML, Citi, etc. too.   The only difference?  The taxpayer is responsible for the losses and nobody goes to jail for fraud.