Big Bad (Really Bad) Madoff

Madoff Whistle blower Harry Markowitz Markopolis in his testimony this AM let all of us know what we should look at 100% of the time in order to stay away from a Ponzi scheme. His overriding theme is "smoothness" of returns over time. Here's the problem with this: Markopolis has just told every crook how to avoid detection; change returns every month and every year and show losses. The other way is something we, as retail shmoes cannot easily do, is to separate the entity holding the stock from the trader (and be dam sure the holder of the stock is big). A Big Five accounting firm auditing a crook doesn't catch a clever crook (two huge firms audited Madoff).