Also have to be clear....Madoff had a totally different standard than Wells Fargo. Wells is FDIC/FFIEC insured. That means that Wells has to put a large part of their deposits into a fund to insure that anyone who has up to $250k in an account won't lose money if the bank goes bankrupt.
Madoff had no such insurance, made no such deposits, and investors lost everything. If you are depositing money into something other than a bank or a credit union that is insured, if the company goes bankrupt, you are screwed.
Back to the big collapse in 2007. There were few laws broken. There was an over investment and lax adherence to lending standards, most pointedly in mortgage lending. People and companies were way over invested in real estate values. It was common to get a no money down mortgage so when property values dropped, the home was worth less than the mortgage. That led to banks getting "jingle mail"; a payment envelope with the keys to the property inside. And since mortgages were bought and sold in bulk between companies, companies investing in real estate got killed. In the end, it was cheaper for the Fed govt to prop up staggering banks than to pay off the FDIC insurance (because the amount of insurance didn't cover the losses). Dodd/Frank, frankly, didn't address this.
Back to Wells...lots of shady practices and ownership (stock holders and executives) have lost a ton of money and/or jobs. However, a lot of what was done was on the grass roots level (branch managers, under pressure, simply started to open accounts without approval, their was little oversight, and these are the crooks but there are thousands and they are "the little guys").
