The term "affinity crime" has been making the rounds in recent weeks thanks to a financial scandal that has cost individual investors and philanthropies a staggering amount of money -- and heartache.

Earlier this month, former investment guru Bernard L. Madoff, 71, was arrested for bilking his clients of $50 billion. Unlike a bank robber who shoves a gun in a clerk's face, Mr. Madoff made his $10 million bail and was out walking within hours.

The former chairman of NASDAQ is accused of erecting an elaborate Ponzi scheme that suckered both titans of industry and merely well-off people who trusted him because of his reputation for financial wizardry.

Mr. Madoff's deep ties within the Jewish community and his history of civic philanthropy -- including $25,000 donated annually to the Democratic Party -- gave him access to a growing pool of investors he ruthlessly exploited.

His list of victims include foundations started by director Steven Spielberg and Holocaust memoirist Elie Wiesel. Several philanthropies have gone out of business as a result of Mr. Madoff's fleecing. Even Abu Dhabi lost the money it invested. When the U.S. government froze the assets of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, dominoes began falling all around the world.

Miraculously, only one death has been traced to the Madoff affair so far. A French investment manager, whose firm unwittingly solicited European clients for the scheme, killed himself in his Manhattan office last week.

Mr. Madoff, who effortlessly replaced Plaxico Burress in the tabloids as the most reviled man in New York, is confined to his penthouse on the Upper East Side. He has to wear an electronic ankle bracelet and has surrendered his passport.

A judge also ordered the disgraced financier to reveal the extent of his holdings before the end of this week. Few believe he'll do so to the satisfaction of all the angry investors.

There is speculation that Bernie Madoff will cop an insanity plea to explain why he betrayed everyone who ever believed he was a decent human being.

A recent editorial in the New Jersey Jewish News succinctly put the con man's modus operandi into perspective:

"Madoff's was an affinity crime, in which a crook uses his ethnicity or social ties to identify and exploit his targets. It is important to point out that Madoff was an equal opportunity predator, harming Jews and non-Jews alike. But there's no doubt he built his reputation, like his pyramid scheme, on a base of Jewish marks."

Speaking of "affinity" fraud, author Herman Rosenblat trotted out a truly lame excuse for lying about how he met his wife of 50 years at a Nazi concentration camp.

His former tale was that they met on a blind date in New York more than a decade after World War II ended. Mr. Rosenblat said he recognized the woman who would become his wife as the same 9-year-old girl who used to smuggle food to him through a barbed-wire fence.

Mr. Rosenblat was, in fact, in a Nazi concentration camp. The logistics of the love story, however, were preposterous. But it got him a book and movie deal. Unlike the dark testimonies that Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel shared with the world, it was the Holocaust with a happy ending.

"I wanted to bring happiness to people," the 79-year-old former television repair man said after several Holocaust scholars and an article in The New Republic questioned his very unlikely tale.

"I brought hope to a lot of people. My motivation was to make good in this world," he said. Meanwhile, the February publication of "Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived" was promptly canceled. (The movie, however, is still in the works -- but as a work of fiction!)

Too bad Oprah Winfrey had already gushed that Mr. Rosenblat's book was "the single greatest love story" she's heard in 20 years. She's forever doomed to have her heart broken by scoundrels. Will Oprah ever learn?

Meanwhile, I'm dreading "affinity" crimes closer to home. Homicides by black men and teenagers continue to rise while declining in every other group, according to a report released by Northeastern University yesterday.

Last year, 426 black males between 14 and 17 were murdered. This is up 40 percent since 2000. Anyone want to trade "affinity" crimes?