It certainly is true that the amount of wealth destroyed by a handful of independent advisors is dwarfed by the trillions that wirehouses have trashed. But try telling that to someone who lost their life's saving in a Ponzi scheme perpetrated by an independent.
Moreover, FINRA's Ketchum may be guilty of distorting the shape of the existing regulatory playing field, as evidenced by his remarks to Congress that FINRA lacked the power to investigate complaints about Bernie Madoff. In fact, Madoff operated a broker-dealer through which he pursued his massive Ponzi scheme for decades and even chaired FINRA's predecessor organization, Nasdaq, where Schapiro and Ketchum worked. Madoff only registered his RIA operation in 2006, but the NASD declared as far back as 1994 that it held B-Ds responsible for the advisory activities of its members, despite what Ketchum has told Congress.
Still, whatever Putman did or didn't do, and whatever the handful of advisors who have accepted consent decrees from the SEC and other regulatory authorities did, no wirehouse or subservient, sympathetic wirehouse regulator like Schapiro and Ketchum made them do it. Before this profession can move forward, it needs to wrestle with some of these issues first.