Who knew?

While we usually participate in Texas only issues, this is such a glaring example of the "Nothing was ever done, it just got worse" scenario we couldn't help but share.

Seems someone tried to warn them about Madoff, too bad some were too busy to listen. Now lots of people are out lots of money and Madoff will be in jail for 150 years...

Below are some highlights from the Washington Post article, you can read in its entirety here.

An investigator at the Securities and Exchange Commission warned superiors as far back as 2004 about irregularities at Bernard L. Madoff's financial management firm, but she was told to focus on an unrelated matter, according to agency documents and sources familiar with the investigation.

Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, a lawyer in the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, sent e-mails to a supervisor, saying information provided by Madoff during her review didn't add up and suggesting a set of questions to ask his firm, documents show. Several of these questions directly challenged Madoff activities that much later turned out to be elements of his massive fraud.

But with the agency under pressure to look for wrongdoing in the mutual fund industry, she wasn't able to continue pursuing Madoff...

Walker-Lightfoot's supervisors on the case were Mark Donohue, then a branch chief in her department, and his boss, Eric Swanson, an assistant director of the department, said two people familiar with the investigation. Swanson later married Madoff's niece, and their relationship is now under review by the agency's inspector general, who is examining the SEC's handling of the Madoff case. (Madoff boasted at a business roundtable discussion about his close relationship with SEC regulators, saying "my niece just married one." )

The SEC's inability to detect Madoff's fraud was a high-profile embarrassment for the agency, which was already under scrutiny for the collapse of investment banks under its watch, helping fuel the financial crisis. SEC Chairman Mary L. Schapiro, who took over shortly after the Madoff case came to light, has acknowledged that the agency's performance was a failure, saying the SEC needed to improve enforcement and its surveillance of financial markets.

At least five times over nearly 20 years, the SEC has investigated Madoff's business, but it never discovered the tremendous fraud. In 2007, for instance, the agency reviewed his activities after warnings from a one-time rival, Harry Markopolos, that Madoff was probably running a Ponzi scheme.

She asked, "Should we just focus on mutual funds and return to Madoff when we're done?"

The next morning, Donohue responded: "Concentrate on mutual funds for the time being."

Walker-Lightfoot left the SEC in 2006 after filing a complaint with the agency alleging that she'd been subjected to a hostile workplace. A person familiar with the complaint said it was settled in Walker-Lightfoot's favor.