>Tiny tip of the iceberg. And all of those only got to prison for crimes against their investors, not for crimes done on behalf of their investors

False. SBF was specifically convicted of committing wire fraud on FTX customers, not just investors/lenders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Bankman-Fried

>much as they're instances of people being punished for stealing money from the wealthy.

Don't most instances of corporate malfeasance result in "stealing money from the wealthy"? If you do a bad, try to cover it up, and then try to raise money from investors, that's basically stealing money from them.

Weren't some of madoff's victims pension funds? I'd call that harm to public.

The Wells Fargo scandal is a good illustration of the problem with this kind of thing. The people who actually opened the fake accounts were low level sales staff and their direct managers, who public opinion saw as victims of unrealistic expectations. So prosecuting any of the actual perpetrators wasn't politically feasible. The only other person they could find to prosecute was an executive who didn't support the fake accounts, and routinely had her team fire people who opened them, but knew about them and didn't disclose them when she should have. Which is a crime, don't get me wrong, but it's not a very serious one.

If I remember correctly, both Bernie Madoff and SBF had a vast number of victims of all economic classes. I think this is more related to the ability to build a criminal case.