Madoff caught on tape coaching witness to fool SEC (AUDIO, TRANSCRIPT)

This is certainly was missed by the media..

Huffington Post:

As the AP reports, in 2005 Bernie Madoff was actually caught on tape coaching an employee at Fairfield-Greenwich Advisors in the fine art of fooling the SEC. In an exchange that sounds like something out of a mob movie, the call begins with Madoff saying, "Obviously, first of all this conversation never took place, ok?" Fairfield-Greenwich, a New York-based hedge fund, fed billions into Madoff's investment scam. A transcript was released yesterday by Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin, whose office reached an $8 million settlement with Fairfield-Greenwich requiring the fund to repay state investors.

Here's more info on the transcript of from the AP:

Madoff dismissed an SEC investigation "fishing expedition" and highlighted how investigators develop cozy relationships with firms they are supposed to regulate.

"The guys ... ask a zillion different questions and we look at them sometimes and we laugh, and we say are you guys writing a book?" Madoff said. "These guys they work for five years at the commission then they become a compliance manager at a hedge fund now."

And there is more:

East Setauket firm triggered Madoff probe in 2004

Back in 2003, officials at the East Setauket hedge fund firm Renaissance Technologies Llc weren't comfortable with the way Bernard Madoff was doing business.

The company's Meritage fund portfolio manager, Nat Simons, son of founder James Simons, couldn't figure out Madoff's strategy and seemed worried about potential problems.
Renaissance had an investment with Madoff through another hedge fund.

"It's high season on money managers, and Madoff's head would look pretty good above Eliot Spitzer's mantle," Nat Simons said in a company e-mail, referring to New York's then-attorney general.
Other Renaissance officials voiced concerns about Madoff in e-mails that were later examined by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Renaissance e-mails ultimately triggered an SEC probe of Madoff in 2004. But the discomfort voiced by Nat Simons and others failed to convince the SEC to take steps to investigate what later turned out to be a massive Ponzi scheme.

Officials at Renaissance, which cut its Madoff investment in half and later got out entirely, declined to comment. The firm's wealthy founder, James Simons, a philanthropist who is generally media shy, has given tens of millions of dollars over the years to Stony Brook University.