Skillful players can play many roles. This is usually a good thing. It lets one relate to one’s audience and fellow players in ways that result in communication, learning and transformation–the triple-score for brands operating in the Networked World.

When a monster like Bernie Madoff gets away with such a long-running scam as the $50 billion-plus Ponzi Scheme he got busted for last month, it’s because he has been able to use his improvisational talent to obfuscate instead of communicate and indoctrinate instead of educate. Ultimately, he transforms wealth into information (i.e. news) instead of the other way around.

Madoff played all his ‘public facing’ roles — Philanthropist, Country Clubber, Yachtsman, Fisherman, Palm Beacher, Hamptonian, Bon Vivant, Patriarch, Temple Elder, Wall Street Guru–so well that it never occurred to his victims he could be fronting a crooked game, or that he had the role of Con Artist in his repertoire. Reportedly his office was adorned with a collection of bulls, the symbol of prosperity and growth on Wall Street. He cloaked himself in the wardrobes and placed himself on stages that were trusted, and so the people who got swindled made assumptions about the integrity of the game he was playing. They trusted good old Uncle Bernie without really knowing anything about what he was doing with their money. Today those victims are saying the same thing about Madoff that they say after seeing Sean Penn play Harvey Milk: “I totally believed him!” Of course you did! That’s what he was counting on!

It’s interesting that those who sniffed out and avoided the Madoff scam did so not by basing their judgment on the integrity of his character–skilled players perform every character with 100% integrity–but on the integrity of the game he was playing.

James Hedges, founder of JLH Securities, says he refused to invest billions with Madoff back in 1997 when during a two hour meeting “We could barely get past page one (of a 40-page due diligence questionnaire) with Madoff before alarm bells were going off. On the strategy itself, when I asked him to explain his investing strategy, it didn’t line up.”

In a recent piece for Portfolio.com, journalist Erin Arvedlund describes how she suspected in an article she wrote for Barrons back in 2001 that something was not kosher in Madoff’s story: “I went with the facts: Nobody, but nobody, on Wall Street traded options the way Madoff did and made the money that he made. Years later, a hedge fund manager whom I had known since the late 1990s said simply: ‘Nobody traded options that successfully. That should have been a big red flag.’”

The lessons of the Madoff Scandal are crystal clear:

Honest players play honest games.

It is easier to spot a crooked game than a crooked player.

Trust the game before you trust the player.