The New York Times has an article today stating that SEC investigated Mr. Madoff and two accountants who raised money for him in 1992, believing they might have found a Ponzi scheme.
“We went into this thing just thinking it might be a huge catastrophe,” an S.E.C. official told The Wall Street Journal in December 1992.
Instead, Mr. Madoff turned out to have delivered the returns that the investment advisers had promised their clients. It is not clear whether the results of the 1992 inquiry discouraged the S.E.C. from examining Mr. Madoff again, even when new red flags surfaced. Lawyers at the S.E.C. did not return calls.
