OK, let’s back up. These people were making one of two assumptions if they think that Madoff just simply “couldn’t” do something like this to them.
There are really only two perspectives I could see holding sway here:
1. Jews don’t do things like this? This is easily proven a silly assumption by even a cursory examine of US business scandals and crimes in the last 20 years,
or
2. Jews do commit financial crimes and swindles... just not on other Jews.
So, let’s debunk #1: without even thinking hard, I can rattle off the following names:
Sam Israel III (the recent fugitive hedge fund guy who tried to fake is own suicide), Martin Frankel, Kobi Alexander, Marc Rich, Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, the whole Antar clan (ie, the Crazy Eddie scam of the 80’s), Barry Minkow (of ZZZ Best fame)...
So it ain’t like Jews are pure as the driven snow where financial scandals are concerned.
Madoff simply raised the stakes a couple orders of magnitude, that’s all.
As to assumption #2 — that’s always a really dangerous assumption. “Oh, he’s in the business of being a crook, but he wouldn’t do that do *me*, because [fill in this blank]...”