[Avodah] Madoff scandal

[Zev Sero]

T613K at aol.com wrote:

> I wonder what the chevra think about Madoff's sons turning him in?  He's 
> a major criminal so they did the right thing?  Dina demalchusa?  Or 
> mesira?  What about kibud av?   What should a person do if he finds out 
> that his father is a goniff?  Minor tax cheat?  major investment fraud? 
>  
> PS Is this a hashkafic or a halachic question?  I don't know.  But my 
> visceral reaction was:  his own kids turned him in?!  That's disgusting!

It is disgusting.

Legally, they had no obligation to do anything with their knowledge.
So long as they did not themselves play any part in the scheme, and
they did not knowingly mislead anyone, they would have been entitled
to keep their mouths shut and let their father fall without pushing
him over the edge.

Halachically, did they have an obligation of arvus to his victims, at
least to the Jewish ones?  But which victims? By turning him in they
certainly did no favours for his existing victims; had the scheme
remained secret, some of them might have recovered some or all of their
money, but the moment it became public all of their money was lost.
The only victims who benefited were the future ones, the hypothetical
new suckers whose money would be used to pay off the old suckers.
But these victims were, by definition, hypothetical -- can one have
an obligation to them, one that overrides ones existing obligations
to ones father and to his existing victims?

Can we compare this to the question of "choleh lefaneinu"?  If we have
an actual sick person whose life can be saved by us cutting up a dead
person we do it, because his pikuach nefesh overrides the issur of
nivul hameis; but if there is no choleh lefaneinu we do not anatomise
meisim, even if we are certain that some day soon someone will need the
information or the organs we would obtain.

It seems to me that while a rational analysis of the situation makes
it difficult to come to any conclusion, the above arguments, when
combined with the natural revulsion a person must feel at the tale of
sons informing on their father, should be enough to conclude that
someone in their position ought not to do as they did.

-- 
Zev Sero                                Have a brilliant Chanukah
zev at sero.name