When the first prison sentence was announced on December 8th, FBI agent Paul Takla spat out a breath of air in disgust. My eyes did a split-strike conversion, a Madoff trading method that the feds called a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t fiction. Prosecutors sat stunned. So did defense lawyers... And by the time it was over, with the fifth and final defendant sentenced on the 15th, a New York federal judge named Laura Taylor Swain had upended her reputation as a harsh bequeather of punishments.

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Last but never least, Crupi attorney Eric Breslin clerked in the early 1980s for a chief justice of New Jersey's supreme court and has since worked hundreds of cases. Among his many wins was a trial in Miami where his client was charged with conspiracy and money laundering. He once told a reporter that hearing the jury foreman say "not guilty" over 70 times (for five defendants, as with the Madoff case) was one of those instances where "time really stood still and my decision to become a lawyer seemed the best decision I had ever made."

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