Hey, did you hear about Meaghan Cheung? It’s the age-old SEC tale, one you’ve probably read about recently in the op-ed section of the New York Times. Ms. Cheung, you see, was an Enforcement Division branch chief (a mid-level supervisor) in the SEC’s New York office who signed off on the decision to close a 2006 SEC investigation into Madoff’s operation without taking any enforcement action. She was a graduate of Yale University and Fordham Law School and worked for years at the SEC to rise up to the level of supervisor.
When the Madoff case came before her, however, she knew of course, how foolish it would be of her to “roil the markets” or to try to “penalize serious corporate and management malfeasance.” Indeed, she “knew in the back of her mind, and in the front too, that if [she] maintain[ed] good relations with Wall Street, [she] might soon be paid huge sums of money to be employed by it.” I mean, that was obvious, right? So of course she did was best for her and let Madoff have a pass.
