No, because ignoring theft leads to theft becoming rampant. But the last time I reported someone stealing $50 using fradulent direct debit, the reaction from the police was pretty much that it wasn't worth investigating. Obviously I got the money back from the bank, but not investigating things that are too small seems like a routine occurrence.
The counterpoint is that it would take 350 million of those investigations to net the same amount as one Madoff.
People tend to worry about small scale corruption because they can see/understand it, but we are in an era when the real financial crime is concentrated at the top, and to your point, we have somewhat decent consumer protections for the small-scale stuff anyway.
Ignore no, but if going after one case costs so much that other cases cannot be persued, then some sort of balancing act needs to be decided.
If they feel that the extra money being spent is essentially marketing money to get their name out there that these cases are persued, then they may feel it is justified expenses. After all, we're talking about it. Then again, mabye the first case costs $200k, but the second case will only cost a fraction since the exeprience is there.??