Jed Rakoff is one of the most respected federal judges in the country, so when he issues an opinion calling one side’s arguments “convoluted,” “conjecture” and “a stretch,” people tend to take notice.

He did so on Thursday, in the matter of Irving H. Picard v. HSBC. Picard, of course, is the bankruptcy trustee in charge of recovering money that he can distribute to the victims of Bernie Madoff’s heinous Ponzi scheme. To this end, Picard has filed something like 1,000 lawsuits, seeking more than $100 billion.

He has sued the feeder funds that funneled money into Madoff’s firm. He has sued people who were close to Madoff and likely knew he was a crook. And he has sued many innocent Madoff investors, who had the misfortune of taking more money out of their accounts than they put in. Although these latter lawsuits have been extremely controversial, “clawing back” money from net winners to create a pot of money for the net losers is something bankruptcy trustees do all the time after a Ponzi scheme is exposed. After all, the gains reaped by the net winners came from money the net losers put in. That’s how Ponzi schemes work.

What trustees don’t generally do, however, is sue big financial institutions like HSBC or JPMorgan Chase on the grounds that they either looked the other way or helped enable the Ponzi schemer. As we discovered during the Enron scandal, the courts frown on “aiding and abetting” suits, even though to a nonlawyer, they can seem more than justified.