From the Daily Beast ...

An employee who worked in Madoff's legitimate brokerage operations, described by the fraudster in his plea agreement as being "successful and profitable," has told The Daily Beast that they were in fact money losers that acted as a front for his Ponzi scheme.

He said that the legitimate businesses, the proprietary and market making arms on the eighteenth and nineteenth floors of Madoff Securities were designed to lure investors in, especially highly-placed figures in society and to fool the SEC into thinking that he had a large and impressive galaxy of businesses.