Houston
– Sir Allen Stanford, a Houston investment banker, was about to
board one of his fleet of personal jets in Wahington, D.C., one day
in 2006 when the phone rang.
On
the line from Miami, he heard the voice of Supervisory DEA Agent
David Tinsley telling him he had been going over his accounts and he
had found some dirty money – a lot of it – that came from a
feared Mexican drug lord known in the underworld as the “Lord of
the Heavens.”
Mr.
Tinsley claimed that Amado Carrillo Fuentes had stashed $3.1 million
in Sir Allen's Stanford International Bank, and they needed to have a
conversation about the investigation.
The
drug agent was in for a surprise.
R.
Allen Stanford re-routed his trip to his Houston-based bank and
showed up only a couple of hours later at the DEA's secure compound
in Miami, ready to talk – without a phalanx of lawyers to back him
up.
In
a conference room, he listened as agents laid out their suspicions
that dirty money from Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador made
the trip to his off-shore bank in Antigua before it wound up back in
circulation stateside and elsewhere in Latin America.
Already
surprised, the DEA boss was even more nonplussed when Sir Allen, an
American knighted in his island tax haven where he did business
running what prosecutors later claimed was nothing more than a $7
billion Ponzi scheme, wrote the DEA a check for $3.1 million to
forfeit the questionable funds.
That
investment and his cooperation with government investigations into
drug money laundering bought the billionaire at least 10 years of
immunity from SEC probes that eventually netted him a 110 year
sentence in federal prison yesteray, convicted on 13 of 14 counts of
wire and mail fraud.
According
to a BBC report, that was the beginning of a 10-year relationship
with the drug cops that eventually left small investors who bought
certificates of deposit from the offshore bank holding the bag in a
very profitable snipe hunt.
So
far, a government-appointed receiver has recovered only $220 million
of the funds obtained in the alleged multi-billion dollar fraud. Of
those, the receiver is claiming $108 million in fees and expenses,
which leaves the investors with very slim pickings.
Sir
Allen stared his victims down in the sentencing hearing, blithely
remaining impassive as they accused him of “financial terrorism”
and angrily recalled how loss of their savings left them powerless to
care for families afflicted with medical problems and a need for
education.
In
a sentencing memo to the Court, prosecutor William J. Stelmach wrote
“Robert Allen Stanford is a ruthless predator responsible for one
of the most egregious frauds in histtory, and he should be sentenced
to 230 years.”
He
called the defendant's bid for a sentence granting him credit for
time served “obscene.”
It
wasn't an easy time behind bars for the man who once sponsored
cricket matches and owned dozens of sleek yachts and fleets of
private jets.
In
a federal detention center at Conroe, a fellow inmate beat him so
severely authorities were forced to transfer him to a medical
facility at Butner, North Carolina, where he convalesced from a
broken nose, a brain concussion, a dislocated neck and severe
contusions and lacerations of his face and head.
There
was some question if he would be able to assist with his defense.
When the court-appointed medical examiners gave prosecutors the green
light, the Court didn't give him much time.
His court-appointed
lawyers tried to be released from his case. They claimed they did not
have time to prepare, and Sir Allen did not have time to examine the
thousands of documents seized when the bank failed.
What
did Sir Allen have to say?
He
called the government's tactics “Gestapo-like” and said he
couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about.
Freezing
his accounts and seizing what assets the bank held following its 2009
failure was unnecessary, he said. It would have all worked out –
eventually.
Nevertheless,
the evidence and testimony showed at trial that investors with older
certificates were paid with money from purchases of later depositors.
That's a crime, a federal offense.
When
the bank's obligations far exceeded its assets and ability to pay off
on the CD's, the SEC and prosecutors moved in. Like Bernie Madoff,
Sir Robert Allen Stanford, 62 years of age, will likely die in prison, despite plans to
appeal his conviction and sentence.
No comments:
Post a Comment