The above quote comes from an article in last Friday's Financial Times, which discussed how US regulators failed to detect the Madoff scam.  While there seems to have been plenty of red flags concerning the scheme, it's always interesting to see people analyze these things with the benefit of hindsight.  In the case of the above quote, the individual who made the statement was the leader of a group that had over $10 million invested with Madoff.  This begs the question -- if it was such an 'obvious' scheme, why did they fall for it?