To Noreen Harrington, a former Goldman Sachs executive, it was not a hard call back in 2003.

After evaluating Bernard L. Madoff’s investment performance, she concluded Madoff was either breaking the law or making up his stock trading entirely.

His performance, she said, very well could be pure “fiction.”

Harrington, then the chief investment officer for a hedge fund owned in part by the owners of the Mets, shared her opinion at the time with her superiors, including Saul Katz, one of the two men who own the Mets.

Katz, Harrington recalled recently, did not like what she had to say. He and his brother-in-law, Fred Wilpon, had sunk much of their personal fortunes into Madoff’s operation, and had been banking profits from those investments for decades. Madoff was a personal friend.

Told that Madoff might be a thief, Katz got “visibly angry,” Harrington recalled. But she stuck to her guns. She said she could not be a party to investing in Madoff. When Katz and his partners in the hedge fund decided to reject her caution, she resigned.