If you’re in it just for the money, law was a lousy pick.  After all, you could have been a hedge fund manager like Walter Noel, who is such an important fellow that he made the front page of the New York Times.  His secret to success, and success it indeed was, was to manage a “secretive hedge fund advisory company” that paid his company, Fairfield Greenwich Group, $500 million in fees since 2003.  Not too shabby.

And what did Noel do to deserve this bountiful compensation?  He invested his clients’ money with Bernie Madoff.  I could do that.  You could too.  It worked out pretty well for Noel.

Internal documents from Fairfield show that the firm has taken more than $500 million in fees since 2003 alone from the money it placed with Mr. Madoff. Nearly all those fees went to a handful of Fairfield executives, including Walter M. Noel, Fairfield’s founder, who used the money to build a glamorous life, splitting his time between homes in New York, Connecticut, Florida and the Caribbean.

Like Mr. Madoff’s firm, Fairfield was at least in part a family business. Four of Mr. Noel’s sons-in-law worked at Fairfield. But unlike Mr. Madoff, Fairfield’s partners, led by Mr. Noel, were not shy about spending their money and taking a high profile in wealthy New York society circles.

“The last few years, they really made a play to be a part of that New York-Southampton social axis,” David Patrick Columbia, the editor of NewYorkSocialDiary.com, said of Mr. Noel and his family. “It happened so fast that you really noticed them.”

Of course, he’s allowed.  Rake in $500 million and you can be pretty much anybody you want to be.  Southampton socialite?  No problem.  Caribbean jet-setter?  Welcome aboard.  Park Avenue Patron?  Why not?  There are so many doors that will open for half a billion dollars.

Now if I understand correctly, about the only thing that Fairfield Greenwich Group was actually supposed to do, aside from sending off the wire transfers and cashing the commission checks, was to track and verify the assets taken under wing. 

As it raised money all over the world, Fairfield also made detailed pledges about how it would monitor and track Mr. Madoff’s investments, the documents show. Now, investors and regulators are sure to ask whether Fairfield made good on those promises — or whether it was a facilitator of the Madoff scandal as well as a victim.

Of course, it’s understandable that they may not have had the time necessary to do their once a week due diligence,  It takes a lot of time to keep up with the maintenance on all those far-flung residences, not to mention decide what to wear to the next hot Hamptons party.  Busy people can’t always get around to the more mundane nuts and bolts of their work.  And who really cares, as long as the cash keeps flowing.

So next time you find yourself in the well, getting your butt kicked by some unduly officious government employee while your client whines about how used your fee to pay for juniors pampers, think of Walter Noel and wonder, does he get to keep the half a billion dollars?