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Stanford Financial Group

Started by truthteller,

16 posts in this topic

RWB

RWB

Posted
Posted

"Securities and Exchange Commission exposes fraud---

"U.S. officials accused Stanford Financial Group, an enormous Texas firm, of conducting a “massive ongoing fraud” by selling $8 billion worth of high-yielding “certificates of deposit.”

 

"Robert Allen Stanford, James M. Davis and Laura Pendergest-Holt were accused of misrepresenting the certificates of deposit, which is illegal.

 

"The Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges Tuesday that implicated three companies: Standford International Bank, Stanford Financial Group and investment adviser Stanford Capital Management.

 

"According to CNN, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor signed a temporary restraining order and froze all the defendants’ assests."

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MrBedrock

MrBedrock

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Apparently all of their assets have been frozen. I have no doubt they have a large amount invested in coins. A few years back I had some talks with reps from The Stanford Group about the possibility of starting the same type of venture capital fund for comics (I am from the comic forum and am a comic dealer based in Houston). The numbers they were talking about (20 million annually) were pretty staggering.

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jgrinz

jgrinz

Posted
Posted
Customers in Antiqua are unable to access and withdrawl their deposits at Stanford banks there. More to come, I'm sure.

 

I thought when assets are frozen NOTHING could be withdrawn from anyone

 

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MAULEMALL

MAULEMALL

Posted
Posted
Parent company of Stanford Coins and Bullion.

 

Appears to be some kind of shakeup in the news today. Anybody got the scoop?

 

 

 

 

TRUTH

Stanford probe widens, Venezuela seizes bank

 

A man is silhouetted as he walks past the Stanford Group AG building in Zurich

By Ana Isabel Martinez and Jason Szep, Reuters

Thu Feb 19, 11:31 AM EST

U.S., Latin American and European investigators widened probes on Thursday into the far-flung financial empire of Texas billionaire Allen Stanford, accused of "massive fraud," and Venezuela seized one of his banks.

 

Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said it was monitoring a possible UK link to the case after media reports that Stanford's books were audited in Britain.

 

Stanford's whereabouts remain unknown. U.S. federal agents raided Stanford Group offices in Miami, Houston and other U.S. cities earlier this week.

 

On Wednesday, ABC News, citing U.S. federal authorities, reported the Federal Bureau of Investigation and others had been investigating whether Stanford was involved in laundering drug money for the Mexico Gulf cartel.

 

Mexico's banking regulator said on Thursday it was investigating the local Stanford bank affiliate for possible violation of banking laws.

 

Peru's securities regulator on Thursday suspended the operations of a local Stanford unit after a similar move on Wednesday by neighboring Ecuador.

 

The fallout from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fraud case against the flamboyant 58-year-old sports entrepreneur has rippled far beyond U.S. borders, prompting investigations from Houston to Antigua and Caracas.

 

The SEC accused Stanford in a civil complaint of fraudulently selling $8 billion in certificates of deposit with impossibly high interest rates from his Antiguan affiliate, Stanford International Bank Ltd (SIB), in a scheme that stretched around the world.

 

Stanford, with homes in the United States and the Caribbean, has remained out of sight since the SEC accused him and two of his top executives of "massive fraud" and misleading investors.

 

The scandal, emerging hard on the heels of the alleged $50 billion fraud by Wall Street veteran Bernard Madoff, has again spooked international investors and sharply increased public distrust of investment schemes.

 

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government moved to take control of the small Stanford Bank Venezuela after it and other Stanford-owned institutions in the oil producer were swamped by panicked investors seeking to withdraw their money.

 

"We have taken the decision to take over," Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez said, adding that the government would seek to quickly sell the bank.

 

REGULATORS MOVE IN

 

Venezuela's move followed similar action by authorities around the region. Regulators in Panama took over a Stanford affiliate there, and a local arm of Stanford Financial Group halted its activities on the stock exchange in Colombia.

 

Clients besieged branches of the Stanford-owned Bank of Antigua on Wednesday in the tiny Caribbean island that was a key outpost of Stanford's business empire. The lines were smaller on Thursday, witnesses said.

 

Antigua and Barbuda Finance and Economy Minister Errol Court said late on Wednesday the twin-island Caribbean state was scrambling to shore up its banking system against the potentially devastating impact of the U.S. fraud charges against its biggest private investor and employer.

 

Antigua and Barbuda's Bankers Association (ABBA) issued a public warning that if customers continued to withdraw funds from Bank of Antigua, "this could destabilize not only Bank of Antigua but the entire financial system."

 

In Venezuela, banking officials were more reassuring, saying the troubles at Stanford Bank Venezuela, one of the country's smallest retail banks, was unlikely to cause much of a disturbance in the sector.

 

The possible UK link to the scandal emerged after the Evening Standard newspaper said the accounting firm C.A.S. Hewlett had audited Stanford's books. Antigua-based C.A.S. Hewlett recently moved its operations to London, according to published reports.

 

"It's a situation where there is the possibility there may be a UK link, and so we are monitoring the situation," a spokesman for the British Serious Fraud Office said. "It's not the case that we have launched investigators at it. We are making contact and liaising with other authorities."

 

The manager of C.A.S. Hewlett's offices in St. John's told Reuters the firm was unaware of any discussions with UK authorities. He said that in 10 years working at the firm he had never met Stanford.

 

DRUGS INVESTIGATION REPORTED

 

In Europe, the fiasco has not yet caused the same shockwaves as the Madoff scandal, though former Swiss President Adolf Ogi on Wednesday stepped down from the advisory board of Stanford Financial Group.

 

Wednesday's ABC report, which cited unnamed officials, said Mexican authorities had detained one of Stanford's private planes as part of a drugs investigation.

 

ABC quoted authorities as saying Stanford could face criminal charges of money laundering and bribery of foreign officials. Authorities said the SEC's action against Stanford on Tuesday may have complicated the federal drug probe.

 

Stanford's whereabouts remain a mystery. CNBC television reported this week that he had tried to hire a private jet to fly from Houston to Antigua, but the jet lessor refused to accept his credit card.

 

The SEC says it does not know where Stanford is and says he failed to respond to subpoenas seeking testimony.

 

A federal judge appointed a receiver on Tuesday "to take possession and control of defendants' assets for the protection of defendants' victims."

 

Stanford's personal fortune was estimated at $2.2 billion last year by Forbes Magazine. He holds dual U.S.-Antiguan citizenship, has donated millions of dollars to U.S. politicians, and has secured endorsements from sports stars, including golfer Vijay Singh and soccer player Michael Owen.

 

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has already severed its association with Stanford, and a planned Stanford-sponsored international cricket tournament is now unlikely to take place, ECB chairman Giles Clarke said.

 

In Antigua, Stanford owns the country's largest newspaper, heads a local commercial bank, and is the first American to receive a knighthood from its government. He has homes across the region, from Antigua to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands to Miami.

 

(Additional reporting by Deisy Buitrago and Jorge Silva in Caracas, Catherine Bosley and Luke Baker in London, Maria Luisa Palomino and Terry Wade in Lima; writing by Pascal Fletcher; editing by John Wallace)

 

© 2009 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved. Reuters content is the intellectual

 

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MAULEMALL

MAULEMALL

Posted
Posted
Parent company of Stanford Coins and Bullion.

 

Appears to be some kind of shakeup in the news today. Anybody got the scoop?

 

 

 

 

TRUTH

Stanford deployed a web of lies, documents show

 

Thu Feb 19, 12:07 AM EST

Disgraced banker R. Allen Stanford's pitch to investors was equal parts glamour and flattery.

 

By serving a select and wealthy clientele, employing top-flight talent and being "a privately held institution free to focus on our No. 1 priority, which is our clients," Stanford was able to earn "premium returns," his bank documents claimed.

 

But those profits may never have existed. Despite claiming to have made double-digit returns between 1993 and 2005, the company's annual returns hadn't reached 10 percent since 1994, according to court papers.

 

Federal law enforcement officials raided Stanford's Houston offices Tuesday, seizing assets and shutting down operations. The action followed civil charges that Stanford had promised clients unrealistic returns on $8 billion in certificates of deposit and committed other financial fraud.

 

It was not the first time Stanford had attracted attention from the authorities. The jet-setting financier, who hobnobbed with lawmakers and had been knighted in the island nation of Antigua, had been under investigation by federal authorities for years, according to people familiar with the investigations and published reports. These people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.

 

Stanford lied about his bank and its history — not just its finances — to gain investors' trust, public records show. Company documents referred to a 70-year tradition of client relationships. Yet there is no record of his bank having existed before the 1980s.

 

And while he told clients their money was guarded by a team of "20-plus analysts," court papers said he and James Davis, a college roommate, were the only ones familiar with the investment strategy.

 

The bank had been misrepresenting its performance since at least 2004, according to court papers.

 

The claims of inflated returns allowed the bank to plow more money into other parts of Stanford Financial Group, paying "disproportionately large commissions" to its affiliate Stanford Group Company, the documents say.

 

Even in 2008, a year when many stock market indexes lost around 40 percent, the company claimed losses of only 1.3 percent.

 

That's when Stanford's lies seem to have caught up with him — thanks in part to news about an alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme by New York financier Bernard Madoff.

 

The Securities and Exchange Commission's investigation of Stanford had been in the works before Madoff turned himself in in December, said a U.S. official with knowledge of the probe who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide information about it.

 

But the agency stepped up enforcement efforts after embarrassing revelations that the SEC had cleared Madoff despite specific tips and multiple investigations, current and former SEC employees said. They said regional offices appeared to be fast-tracking the Stanford case and others with the potential to give the agency another black eye.

 

One former employee said enforcement officials had told him they were trying to recover from the negative publicity surrounding the Madoff case. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity to preserve their relationships with the agency.

 

Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday he could not rule out more Stanford-sized or Madoff-sized fraud scandals.

 

"It's hard to say. I'd like to think that those things are going to be the largest," Holder told reporters in Washington. "The department will be vigilant in the detection of that kind of fraud. That's especially true given the magnitude of the stimulus effort and the recovery effort. We want to make sure the money gets into the right hands for the right reasons."

 

SEC officials did not return calls seeking comment.

 

Stanford's companies also had been under investigation by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a self-regulatory body. FINRA spokeswoman Nancy Condon said the two investigations were operating in parallel "and at some point, both of us became aware of each other."

 

With SEC investigators and Florida regulators closing in in recent weeks, Stanford desperately sought to reassure employees, investors and the press that nothing was wrong. He told clients these were "routine examinations," court records show.

 

A Feb. 12 company e-mail told workers that "former disgruntled employees" had made complaints that could complicate an "otherwise routine examination."

 

And a Stanford spokesman denied there was anything unusual about a January visit to Stanford's Miami offices, telling The Associated Press, "We were informed by the three agencies that this was a routine examination."

 

But when one client tried to cash out a multimillion dollar deposit on Feb. 9, the bank told him the SEC had frozen the account.

 

Another client was told that Stanford personally had ordered a two-month moratorium on payouts, court records show.

 

Even after Tuesday's raid made international headlines and provoked bank runs in Antigua, some investors were still looking for answers.

 

At the Stanford Fiduciary Investor Services' office in a downtown Miami high-rise late Wednesday afternoon, a 64-year-old retired investor arrived in a motorcycle jacket and helmet.

 

The man said he had been told his account, totaling over $1 million, was being transferred to another bank. He spoke on condition of anonymity to maintain the privacy of his investments.

 

He said he had called for more information Wednesday, but there was no one there to pick up.

 

___+

 

Associated Press writers Matt Apuzzo and Devlin Barrett in Washington and Suzette Laboy in Miami contributed to this report.

 

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DC Dawg

DC Dawg

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Posted
Disgraced banker R. Allen Stanford's pitch to investors was equal parts glamour and flattery.

Stanford was an amateur when compared to Bernie Madoff. Stanford is accused of an $8 billion scheme and Madoff is accused of a $50 billion scheme.

 

As for Stanford Coins and Bullion, it was reported that they did not have a large business and the only people who stand to lose money are those who have not taken delivery on coins and bullion items. There is a small clientele who allowed Standford to "bank" their gold. Unless there are gold assets for the courts to disperse, those people may lose their gold, too.

 

I think the Stanford and Madoff situations should remind us that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

 

Scott :hi:

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MarkFeld

MarkFeld

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Posted
Disgraced banker R. Allen Stanford's pitch to investors was equal parts glamour and flattery.

Stanford was an amateur when compared to Bernie Madoff. Stanford is accused of an $8 billion scheme and Madoff is accused of a $50 billion scheme.

 

As for Stanford Coins and Bullion, it was reported that they did not have a large business and the only people who stand to lose money are those who have not taken delivery on coins and bullion items. There is a small clientele who allowed Standford to "bank" their gold. Unless there are gold assets for the courts to disperse, those people may lose their gold, too.

 

I think the Stanford and Madoff situations should remind us that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

 

Scott :hi:

No doubt, the coin company also owes money to dealers they have transacted business with and who weren't involved in transactions that were too good to be true.
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