Allen Stanford Indicted Again as Prosecutors Drop 7 of 21 Criminal Charges
Indicted Financier R. Allen Stanford
F. Carter Smith/Bloomberg
Indicted financier R. Allen Stanford arrives at the Bob Casey Federal Courthouse in Houston on Aug. 24, 2010.
Indicted financier R. Allen Stanford arrives at the Bob Casey Federal Courthouse in Houston on Aug. 24, 2010. Photographer: F. Carter Smith/Bloomberg
R. Allen Stanford, the Texas financier accused by U.S. prosecutors of leading a $7 billion investor fraud scheme, was indicted again and accused of seven fewer counts than previously.
Prosecutors filed a revised charging document yesterday in U.S. District Court in Houston. Stanford, who has denied all allegations of wrongdoing, has been in federal custody since June 2009 awaiting trial.
Stanford is accused of defrauding investors who bought certificates of deposit issued by his Antigua-based Stanford International Bank Ltd. by misleading them about the nature of the investments and their regulatory oversight.
“The original indictment was such a mess, I think prosecutors were just trying to clean up the charges,” Ali Fazel, one of Stanford’s criminal-defense lawyers, said in a telephone interview today. “I don’t think anything of relevance has been dropped right now.”
The original indictment contained 21 criminal counts. The new one contains 14, including conspiracy to commit money laundering, obstruction of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, wire fraud and mail fraud.
Two wire-fraud counts were dropped as were five mail-fraud charges. Stanford, 61, still faces five of each count, conviction for any one of which could result in a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
‘Reshuffling of Things’
“There’s been a reshuffling of things,” Fazel said of the superseding indictment. “There’s been some taking away of things that were not conduct specific to Stanford, but were more directed at the other defendants.”
Laura Sweeney, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Justice Department, declined to immediately comment on the revamped indictment, citing a judicial gag order in the case.
Stanford is being held at the hospital at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina, where he is receiving treatment for a prescription drug dependency developed while in prison.
His trial, previously scheduled for Jan. 24, was postponed pending the results of his treatment.
The case is U.S. v. Stanford, 09-cr-00342, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas (Houston).
To contact the reporters on this story: Andrew Harris in Chicago at aharris16@bloomberg.net; Laurel Brubaker Calkins in Houston at laurel@calkins.us.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net
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