Good read from the Times, though I suspect some of the reaction to it is overblown. Maybe I’m reading this through SNY-colored glasses, but I’m not entirely sure where the smoking gun is here. We knew already the Wilpons had lots of money invested with Madoff and this provides a ton of details about those investments. But if they recommended their employees also invest money with Madoff, why does that imply they were in on the scheme?

We’ve read that the Wilpons, through withdrawn interest over a long time, netted something like $40 million on an investment in the half-billion dollar range. Is that a big enough haul for billionaires (or at least people who thought at the time they were billionaires) to essentially rob their own employees? What’s the motivation there?

Seems way more likely that the Wilpons were just epically duped by Madoff. And while I’d like to think I’d be a little more skeptical of a guy claiming to return 18 percent on my giant investment, Madoff managed to steal $65 billion dollars, so he was probably a pretty convincing huckster.