Bernie Madoff's vaunted investment strategy turned out to be a huge Ponzi scheme and Bernie "made off" with the money. How many times have you heard that one? It would have been funny if only someone felt like laughing. Investment experts were amazed he got away with it so long; but, the fact that he stayed "under the radar" is the key to understanding how it happened so easily and why it will continue to happen.

Madoff's scheme cunningly exploited an Achilles' heal in the natural human ethical shield. We judge people differently based on our personal relationships with them. We are hard-wired to support our friends and, when needs be, disregard everybody else.

Madoff almost got away with it because his people were very tightly knit and secretive. His investors were also made to feel like "insiders"; they trusted him and never suspected his motive. He worked largely through personal contacts and referrals. His scam, like all so-called affinity scams, played on the power of the innate human ethical sense that says you can trust those who are close to you and other people like yourself.

But, why do we hate him so much? After all, he's just a thief. He didn't kill anybody!

Their natural ethical sense urges all humans to seek individual happiness within social groups. Ethical cooperative groups are like concentric circles. The most immediate loop of family and then close friends and professional associates commands the greatest claim to responsibility. The support of friends and colleagues results from their trust, the product of faith generated by constancy and steadfastness in carrying out obligations. People fear that without a reliable circle of friends and relatives, life would be much more difficult and dangerous. We need to recognize that ethically we judge differently depending upon who the action impacts. We try to resist believing this, but we know it's true. Only by understanding ourselves and our innate urge to protect our friends and disregard strangers can we begin to free our reason to adjust the directions our emotional drives push us in.

As a classroom discussion starter, I would sometimes ask the students who owned a dog to identify themselves. Then I put a hypothetical to them. "You come upon a pond where you see two individuals drowning. One is a man, a complete stranger. The other is your dog. You can only save one. Which one will live and which one will die?"

Students found this choice vexing. Many refused to decide and those who did choose nearly always saved the pet, adding something like, "I know it's wrong, but"

The fact is we care deeply about some and very little, if at all, about the rest. The students were taught, as were we all, that any human is more valuable than any animal. But, something in their gut tells them this isn't true. The stranger has no personal ethical claim on them; they owe him nothing. The dog is a loyal friend who, they believe, in time of need won't let them down.

This powerful innate ethical sense of duty comes into play to stabilize and strengthen tight and intimate groups. Everyone is motivated by the same strong instinct to protect the interests of other insiders, thus leading to the belief that friends will, and indeed should, naturally help friends. The common English idiom calling for cooperation and team work "we're all in the same boa," sums it up. Because of this, loyalty has emerged as a bedrock human ethical expectation, and its opposite, betrayal, is entrenched as one of the most onerous of naturally odious behaviors.

Everyone has the same intrinsic conviction that the loyalty of family, friends and other intimate insiders is absolutely expected.

Being jilted by a friend is one of the most despicable assaults on this innate ethical understanding of what is right. All of these emotional ethical elements are in play in the public perception of and disdain for Bernie Madoff. As a longtime close friend and confidante of many of his victims, Madoff's was much more than a scam; it was a betrayal. There are very few behaviors that sink so low on the natural human scale of right and wrong; not even murder matches it.

ANTHONY TIATORIO is a retired Mansfield eacher and social studies department head. He maintains the Web site www.ethicsineducation.com.