Believe it or not, Bernie Madoff’s phony monthly trading reports listed trades on days the market was closed, or at prices that were far off the market, or in volumes that simply never existed. Yet Madoff’s scam continued for 36 years, from 1972 until 2008, as the SEC was incapable of discovering the truth, and Madoff’s clients never read their phoney monthly statements, since through bull and bear markets Madoff always turned in profits that were not real. And shocking as it may seem, the SEC knew that Robert Allen Stanford was a fraud early on in 1998, but chose not to prosecute as the securities he sold were short term notes of a foreign bank supposedly yielding 12% and were not shares of stock registered in the U.S. Imagine the stupidity of that pusillanimous decision. What a bunch of wimps! More on Forbes here.