No
In fact I don’t find him in the same criminal class as Charles Keating who set up salesmen in his S&L and got his customers (mostly seniors) to transfer their money from insured accounts to stock in his soon to be bankrupt corp.
When Madoff went wrong he was scamming billionaires by promising them returns much too great to be plausible. They were suckered by their own greed. Eventually he brought in banks and municiple investors who were supposed to be knowledgeable professionals but they couldn’t see beyond their greed and should all be drummed out of their jobs.
Madoff couldn’t have gotten away with much without the cooperation of his ‘victims’. If someone comes up to you and says “Give me a dollar and I’ll run it through my magic box and give you two dollars back”, what would you do? If you don’t understand your investments, put your money in govt bonds.
The only people who were innocents were residents of cities whose revenue was invested with Madoff. Even then they should have had oversight committees for their hired financial officers.
Investment Rule 1: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably ia.