Stanford Group $8B Scheme: Bernie Madoff not alone, the Dominos Chips Continue Falling

This is what we mean when in a free society we expect the government to let failures and cheats fall. Just as Madoff and Stanford aught not be rescued - so goes for the rest of the Wall St. bunch. Merril Lynch CEO still walking free people - and former(?) AIG execs are laughing all the way to their private islands.

SEC charges Stanford Group in $8B scheme

A Houston-based broker-dealer and investment advisory firm with an office in Dallas has been charged in an $8 billion investment scheme that centers around a CD program and involves false promises to investors.

The Securities and Exchange Commission out of its Fort Worth Regional office alleges in a lawsuit filed in Dallas that Robert Allen Stanford through three of his companies -- Antiguan-based Stanford International Bank, Houston-based Stanford Group Co. and Stanford Capital Management -- were involved in orchestrating a fraudulent investor scenario where the parties made false promises to investors and fabricated return data on investments, the SEC said in a statement Tuesday.

The SEC also filed charges against James Davis, chief financial officer of SIB and Laura Pendergest-Holt, chief investment officer of Stanford Financial Group.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Conner has granted the SEC’s request to implement an emergency temporary restraining order to freeze the parties’ assets and appoint a marshal over those items.

“As we allege in our complaint, Stanford and the close circle of family and friends with whom he runs his businesses perpetrated a massive fraud based on false promises and fabricated historical return data to prey on investors,” said Linda Chatman Thomsen, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “We are moving quickly and decisively in this enforcement action to stop this fraudulent conduct and preserve assets for investors.”

Rose Romero, regional director of the SEC’s Fort Worth office, called the scheme “a fraud of shocking magnitude that has spread its tentacles throughout the world.”

...

SEC director using the words "Shocking", after the Madoff massive wealth theft - you'd expect the people working at SEC will be less shocked.

Of course, now that the country is taking the same course and over leveraging itself, getting more debt to pay for - ehhh.. wait a second... what is the generational theft act supposed to finance anyways? Did anyone read the spendulus billulus already?