> by being a large exchange and front running trades. That's what many of madoff's victims believed about madoff! One way that conmen pull off their stunts is

> by being a large exchange and front running trades. That's what many of madoff's victims believed about madoff! One way that conmen pull off their stunts is by convincing the marks that they're doing something shady. A con always has to answer the questions: Where is the windfall coming from? Why isn't someone else taking it first, and Why would the conman share it? "The money really comes from front-running trades, other people can't take the windfall because I run the trade routing, to make the profit I need to have a huge fund to hide the activity in." All the better if the explanation is spread among the marks via rumor-- then the con never has to answer an tough questions. Similar patterns exist in other scams. E.g. early bitcoin ponzi operator pirate40 had some people thinking that he was laundering money for dark web drug markets. I'd be interested in knowing if there were similar explanatory rumors about FTX/SBF.