Where is Billionaire Defendant, Following SEC Lawsuit?
Where is a 58-year-old Texas billionaire accused by securities regulators in civil litigation yesterday of operating a massive investment fraud?
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed the federal lawsuit in Dallas over $8 billion in certificates of deposit sold under dubious representations by a bank affiliated with his Stanford Group Co., which is also a defendant. But the SEC doesn’t know where to find R. Allen Stanford, an official tells Bloomberg.
“We don’t know where he is, quite frankly,” says Rose Romero. The director of the SEC’s office in Fort Worth, she is overseeing the suit.
Stanford wasn’t at any of the three business offices raided by federal authorities in connection with the litigation, and CNBC reports that he tried to get a private jet to fly him from Houston to Antigua, only to have the credit card he tried to use to pay for it rejected by the carrier, writes the New York Daily News.
Portfolio magazine’s Market Movers blog predicts that extradition will soon be an issue in the ongoing case.
“The allegations on their face support criminal mail and wire fraud charges. I would assume there’s an ongoing FBI investigation,” attorney Michael Gurland of Neal Gerber Eisenberg tells the blog. “The likelihood that he’s going to be indicted [is] extraordinarily high.”
Earlier ABAJournal.com coverage:
Texas Billionaire R. Allen Stanford Accused By SEC of Operating ‘Massive’ Fraud
