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WASHINGTON — Financial wizard Bernie Madoff didn’t just idiot investors. He also conned the nation’s top securities regulators, who investigated his business last year and apparently missed the event he was running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

It wasn’t the first time the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) overlooked unhampered warning signs of possible fraud.

“I can’t comprehend how a well-run investigation would have missed a deceit of this magnitude,” said Lynn Turner, a former SEC chief accountant.

Another expert agreed. “The fact that this could go forward toward likewise long through someone who was known to the superintendence raises questions of the effectiveness of our regulatory plan,” said Charles Elson, the director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

The SEC’s compulsion division looked into Madoff’s business in 2007. The agency did not refer the matter to commissioners for legal action. What did the investigators find and why didn’t they look harder?

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox called “deeply troubling” what he has learned about the investigations.

“The commission has well-informed that credible and precise allegations regarding Mr. Madoff’sitting financial wrongdoing, going back to at least 1999, were repeatedly brought to the attention of SEC staff but were never recommended to the commission for action,” Cox said in a mention Tuesday. He said he has asked his inspector general to review the agency’sitting conduct.

Securities-law experts point to Madoff’s written assertion to the SEC that he had 23 clients.

Demonstrably false, the experts repeat. Look at the dozens of well-heeled victims strewed across the fiscal landscape. They include a charity of movie superintendent Steven Spielberg; the family benevolent foundation for U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.; and a trust tied to real-estate distinguished person Mortimer Zuckerman.

“One would think this would not regard required a far-famed distribute cards of investigation,” said Stanley Grossman, a old hand securities lawyer who expects to represent many of the victims in the Madoff case.

Was the government’s watchdog over Wall Street a lap dog? The SEC, main federal regulator protecting investors, has faced such charges before.

Its oversight of the Wall Street investment houses — rotting in the reach from piled-up securities tied to subprime mortgages — drew significant criticism. A go over again by the SEC inspector general determined the agency’s monitoring of the five biggest Wall Street firms, which included Bear Stearns, was lacking.

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