Various news accounts in recent days have portrayed fifth-generation Texan Robert Allen Stanford, whose Stanford Financial Group is based in Houston, as the second coming of Bernie Madoff. Which is why the Securities and Exchange Commission today filed this complaint against Stanford in Dallas federal court, alleging "massive, ongoing fraud." Stanford Financial Group's Dallas offices are on the fifth floor of the Crescent Court.
Says the SEC's press release concerning the complaint, which also names Stanford International Bank, Stanford Group Company and investment adviser
Stanford Capital Management:
[It] alleges that acting through a network of SGC financial advisers, SIB has sold approximately $8 billion of so-called "certificates of deposit" to investors by promising improbable and unsubstantiated high interest rates. These rates were supposedly earned through SIB's unique investment strategy, which purportedly allowed the bank to achieve double-digit returns on its investments for the past 15 years.Update: A Friend of Unfair Park sends us this item just posted to Talking Points Memo concerning Senator John Cornyn's "fact-finding mission" to SFG's home base of Antigua in November 2004. Says here SFG was "the sponsor" of said trip, which cost a little more than $7,000.
