Some are philosophical, conceding little more than an impatience for justice.

Others are riddled with fear, having lost all or significant portions of their life savings to disgraced financier Bernard L. Madoff.

Still others are seething mad and looking for answers.

The emotions run the gamut, but one thing Madoff’s former clients agree on is that the once-highly respected Wall Street figure did not act alone in a scheme he has admitted may have fleeced investors of tens of billions of dollars over the course of several decades.

“I’ve said since the beginning that others were involved. You can’t run a scam of this magnitude -- this scale -- without help from others,” said Burt Ross, owner of an eponymous real estate firm in northern New Jersey. Ross lost about $5 million to Madoff.

“He didn’t do it alone. Of course not,” said Tim Murray, matter of factly. “It’s impossible given the magnitude of it. There’s accounting to be done. Even if that accounting is fraudulent, there’s still accounting to be done.”

Murray, of Maple Grove, Minn., put his family’s losses at about $12 million.

The legal community agrees, especially that part that is trying to help clients recover their losses.

“It’s virtually inconceivable and to me, and obviously to many others, that he was able to do this by himself,” said Michael Shapiro, a New York attorney who is representing a number of former Madoff clients.

Shapiro pointed to statements made last week by the court appointed trustee overseeing liquidation of Madoff’s businesses that confirmed earlier reports that Madoff had not made a single transaction for any of his clients for many years -- 13 years, in fact.

Nevertheless, Madoff’s customers received detailed monthly statements describing the transactions that supposedly generated the enviable returns to which investors flocked.

“It would have been physically impossible for Madoff by himself to create and mail out on a monthly basis thousands of customer statements,” said Shapiro. “There wouldn’t be enough hours in the day for him to accomplish that himself.”

This and other evidence that has emerged since Madoff’s arrest in December -- $15 million in withdrawals by Madoff’s wife Ruth in the weeks before her husband’s arrest, for instance -- makes his guilt seem all the more obvious to those whose money he accepted.

Frustration is rising among some.

“Why this is taking so long to get an indictment is what I don’t understand,” said Ross, a former mayor of Fort Lee, N.J. “I don’t want to second-guess the prosecutors, but it’s been three months without an indictment and that’s getting a little problematic.”

Madoff was 70 years old when he was arrested, Ross noted, and every day Madoff doesn’t spend in a jail cell is a day spent in his Manhattan penthouse, where he remains on 24-hour house arrest after being released on $10 million bail.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” said Ross.

Shapiro urged patience. “I’d rather see it done slowly and right than fast and wrong,” the attorney said.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment.

Some victims’ ire has moved beyond Madoff and is now focused on the government agencies whose functions tie them inextricably to the Madoff financial mess.

Criticism of the Securities and Exchange Commission hasn’t abated since Madoff’s scheme fell apart. Subsequently, at least one whistle blower has come forward with very public assertions of the red flags he raised over the years in an effort to alert regulators that Madoff’s returns seemed unrealistic.

“Who do I think was complicit in this? Legally, I don’t know. Factually, I can say the SEC. Had the SEC done their job back in 2000, how many people would still be in their homes,” said former Madoff client Ronnie Sue Ambrosino.

Ambrosino discovered she’d lost all her retirement money while on a cross-country mobile home trip. She and her husband have been stuck in Surprise, Ariz., since December, and she now helps run an Internet support group for Madoff victims at BernardMadoffVictims.org.

Murray, the Minnesota client, agreed that the SEC’s role in the Madoff affair deserves more scrutiny.

“I’m way over being mad at Madoff,” he said, “but to have the government fail this way is just astonishing.”

The Internal Revenue Service has also emerged as a frequent target of Madoff clients.

Ambrosino noted that Madoff’s clients paid taxes each year on the gains Madoff reported to them. They had no way of knowing the gains were apparently figments of Madoff’s imagination, so the taxes were paid.

Tax laws, however, prevent these clients from seeking reimbursement for those taxes beyond three years. Meanwhile, investigators are threatening clawbacks -- or mandated returns of Madoff-related profits -- reaching back well over three years.

“The fact of the matter is that the IRS has received ill-gotten gains,” said Ambrosino.

Tax relief in the form of Madoff-related legislation may be in the works.

U.S. Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-NY, said earlier this week that he sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman asking him to allow Madoff clients to claim a theft loss on their 2008 taxes, and amend their tax returns dating back to at least 1995.

By claiming a theft loss, investors would be eligible for a tax credit for money that Madoff stole from them, Ackerman explained in a press release. And by extending back to 1995 the time frame for which Madoff clients can amend their tax returns it would allow victims to obtain refunds for taxes paid on “phantom profits” claimed by Madoff for an additional ten years.

Currently, Madoff investors, like all taxpayers, can only amend tax filings for the past three years.

Ross, the Northern New Jersey businessman, has taken perhaps the healthiest approach to his situation.

While he’s adamantly opposed to any plea agreement for Madoff (Ross compared it to prosecutors making a deal with a serial killer), the former mayor said he’s not dwelling on Madoff’s fate. Or his own, for that matter.

“I’m trying to move on,” he said.