I've got to say that the problem for me comes down to one of competence versus theivery. I don't think that the guys I worked with were outright thieves. I do think they were not especially competent in recommending investments.
These guys are salesmen. They could be selling you printers, but they're selling investments instead. They really are not paid to understand the stuff...they are paid to move product.
When I say that the consumers are equally complicit, what I really mean is that in many cases they just listened to a sales pitch and accepted it as truth.
Not to say that there weren't defrauded consumers or evil salesmen. I'm sure there are individual cases of fraud. I just think it's a really complex system with overlapping spheres of incompetence that defies easy characterization as "fraud" or "not fraud."
We can strenuously agree it's broken though.