Sept. 26 (Bloomberg) -- R. Allen Stanford, awaiting trial on charges he swindled investors in a $7 billion scheme, was given medical treatment after getting into a fight with an inmate in a Texas jail, a U.S. marshal said.

“He got into an altercation with another inmate,” Alfredo Perez, a spokesman for the Houston office of the U.S. Marshals Service, said yesterday in a phone interview. “He’s being examined by medical staff and treated for his injuries,” which aren’t life-threatening, Perez said. Perez said the incident happened about 10 a.m. on Sept. 24.

Stanford, who has been in custody since being indicted in June, faces 21 felony charges for allegedly paying investors “improbable if not impossible” returns by taking funds from later investors in certificates of deposit at Antigua-based Stanford International Bank Ltd.

The guard who answered the phone at the Joe Corley Detention Center in Conroe, north of Houston, where Stanford is being held without bail, declined to comment on Stanford’s condition or whereabouts, citing the facility’s policy on prisoner information.

“Mr. Stanford is fine,” Kent Schaffer, Stanford’s court- appointed lawyer, said yesterday in a phone interview. “Contrary to reports, he is not in intensive care at the hospital. I understand his injuries are not serious enough to keep him in the hospital.

“He’s either out now or will be out in the morning,” Schaffer said. “When I checked on him three or four hours ago, he was not back at the jail, but he may be by now.”

Appeal Options

Schaffer said he is considering options for appealing a federal judge’s finding that Stanford is a flight risk and should be held in jail without bond until trial, which could be a year or more away. He said he plans to file a petition next month with the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

“This is just one more reason we wish he was out on bond,” Schaffer said.

Citing anonymous sources, KPRC, the Houston affiliate of NBC News, reported that Stanford had been hospitalized overnight at the Conroe Regional Medical Center for observation.

A hospital receptionist who didn’t give her name said there was no recent record of Stanford in its computer system.

“We can’t say where we took him,” Perez said, noting it is against Marshals Service policy to disclose prisoner movements.

Stanford, who was ranked 205th on Forbes’s 2008 list of the richest Americans, is getting media attention because of who he is rather than because he’s seriously injured, Perez said.

‘Pretty Mellow’

“Where he is at, the prison is pretty mellow,” Perez said. “It’s only because of who he is that the media’s calling. Altercations happen between inmates all the time.”

Stanford, 59, was rushed to the Conroe hospital with a heart rate of 300 beats a minute on Aug. 27, shortly before he was to appear in federal court in Houston. Stanford remained in the hospital for five days of observation and testing, which included a heart catheterization to check for cardiac problems. The testing discovered a leg aneurism, which wasn’t life threatening, and it was surgically repaired on Aug. 31 before he was returned to jail.

The case is U.S. v. Stanford, 09-cr-00342, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas (Houston).

To contact the reporter on this story: Laurel Brubaker Calkins in Houston at laurel@calkins.us.com.

Last Updated: September 26, 2009 00:01 EDT