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FBI agents have arrested the chief investment officer of troubled Stanford Financial Group, accusing Laura Pendergest-Holt of obstructing a Securities and Exchange Commission fraud investigation.

...the FBI detained Chief Investment Officer Laura Pendergest-Holt on federal obstruction charges in the Stanford Financial Group fraud. The USDOJ said she concealed her role in, and familiarity with, investments of the Antigua-based bank from SEC investigators..... civil charges have been filed against chairman, R. Allen Stanford, and CFO Jim Davis, accusing them of fraudulently marketing $8B in high-interest CD's issued by the Antigua bank.

Great! Here's a guy, like his boss, with a history of poor judgement. (Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, Sheila Dixon, etc. And we're supposed to trust him to oversee the $800 Billion CRAPulus? Fox News reports: A fund of hedge funds run by two members of Vice President Joe Biden's family was marketed exclusively by companies controlled by Texas financier R. Allen Stanford, who is facing Securities and Exchange Commission accusations of engaging in an $8 billion fraud. The $50 million fund was jointly branded between the Bidens' Paradigm Global Advisors LLC and a Stanford Financial Group entity and...

The State of the Catholic Church in America, Diocese by Diocese Feb/March, 2007 | Rev. Rodger Hunter-Hull and Steven Wagner

Billionaire R. Allen Stanford, accused of masterminding a “massive fraud” through his Stanford Group Co., marketed a fund run by members of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s family, according to a Web site. The Paradigm/SCM Core Alternative Fund, a combination of a fund run by the Biden family’s Paradigm Global Advisors LLC and a Stanford Capital Management entity, was marketed by the Stanford Trust Co., another of Stanford’s units, according to the company’s Web site. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the links between Stanford’s company and the fund overseen by the Bidens. Paradigm Global Advisors is run by Biden’s...

(Reuters) – A fund of hedge funds run by two members of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's family was marketed exclusively by firms controlled by Texas financier Allen Stanford, charged by regulators with an $8 billion fraud, the Wall Street Journal said. The $50 million fund was jointly branded between the Bidens' Paradigm Global Advisors LLC and a Stanford Financial Group entity, and was known as the Paradigm Stanford Capital Management Core Alternative Fund, the paper said. Stanford-related companies marketed the fund to investors and also invested about $2.7 million of their own money in the fund, the paper said,...

A fund of hedge funds run by two members of Vice President Joe Biden's family was marketed exclusively by companies controlled by Texas financier R. Allen Stanford, who is facing Securities and Exchange Commission accusations of engaging in an $8 billion fraud. The $50 million fund was jointly branded between the Bidens' Paradigm Global Advisors LLC and a Stanford Financial Group entity and was known as the Paradigm Stanford Capital Management Core Alternative Fund. Stanford-related companies marketed the fund to investors and also invested about $2.7 million of their own money in the fund, according to a lawyer for Paradigm....

U.S. Reps. Paul E. Kanjorski and Chris Carney plan to wait before deciding whether to return thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from a firm that lobbies for defense contractors and is under investigation by the FBI. Both congressmen said they won’t return the contributions now because no wrongdoing has been found in the case of the PMA Group. The FBI is investigating the group for funneling bogus campaign contributions to Rep. John Murtha and other lawmakers, according to The New York Times. Mr. Kanjorski also said he won’t return a $2,500 contribution from an official of the Stanford Financial...

The FBI is probing possible money laundering linked to Mexico's infamous narco-trafficking Gulf Cartel in its investigation of Texan billionaire Sir Allen Stanford.... An FBI source close to the investigation would not give exact details but confirmed the agency was looking at links to international drug gangs as part of the huge investigation into Stanford's banking activities. Reports in the US have said Mexican authorities have detained one of Stanford's private planes as part of an investigation into possible links to the Gulf Cartel. It has been alleged cheques found inside the plane were linked to the cartel, which is...

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ST. JOHN’S, Antigua — When Robert Allen Stanford arrived here in the early 1990s, few locals had ever heard of the Texas financier. Today, he dominates so many aspects of life on this sun-drenched Caribbean island that some have taken to calling it “Stanford Land.”

Stanford panic spreads across Latin America By Naomi Mapstone in Lima and Adam Thomson in Mexico City Published: February 19 2009 01:54 | Last updated: February 19 2009 01:54 Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia and Mexico were the latest Latin American countries to experience the fall-out from the Stanford case on Wednesday. Well-heeled investors queued at the offices of Stanford Financial Group’s Ecuadorean affiliate in the capital of Quito, demanding to know the status of their deposits. Stock exchanges in Quito and Guayaquil, where a second Stanford unit is based, were expected to suspend the group’s local brokerage house by late...

For a town of just 10,000 people, it is remarkable that Mexia - motto "a great place, no matter how you pronounce it" - should throw up two larger-than-life characters: Anna Nicole Smith and Sir Allen Stanford. At first glance, Ms Smith and Sir Allen have little in common beyond their birthplace. The surgically enhanced former Playmate of the Year was the model, actress and sex symbol who died from a drug overdose in 2007, nine months before her 40th birthday. Sir Allen, who has also been under the plastic surgeon's knife, is the flamboyant businessman turned cricket entrepreneur who...

ST. JOHN'S, Antigua (AP) — Caribbean regulators Friday took control of an Antiguan bank owned by Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford to prevent its collapse as depositors rushed to pull their money after American financier was accused of fraud. The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, the monetary authority for eight island economies in the region, said the Bank of Antigua's board of directors requested the intervention because of the "untenable situation" at its three branches in the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda. "There has been an unusual and substantial withdrawals of funds by depositors from the bank precipitated by recently...

U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd said Thursday he will return contributions received from financier R. Allen Stanford who is accused by federal regulators of defrauding investors of $8 billion. "Whatever it is, all of it will be donated to charity," Dodd said ... "Unfortunately, I'm not clairvoyant," said Dodd, a Democrat facing re-election next year. "In some cases, I've received money and support from people who turn out to be people you wouldn't want to be associated with." Dodd was unsure whether he had ever met Stanford or exactly how much money he had received from the financier, either directly...

Accused of cheating investors out of $8 billion, Texas financier R. Allen Stanford could've been anywhere when he dropped out of sight earlier this week. He has extensive business ties in Latin America and the West Indies, and dual citizenship in the United States and the Virgin Islands. He was even knighted in Antigua and Barbuda, where he resides and is better known as Sir Allen. So where does a guy with those kinds of connections go to get away from it all? Apparently, Stafford County. That's where FBI agents from Richmond caught up with him yesterday after officials with...

For Mark Tidwell and Charles Rawl, former employees who filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Texas billionaire Allen Stanford's financial empire, the alarm bells first rang in May 2005, when some clients got a letter from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Tidwell and Rawl's concerns that Stanford was falsifying the returns of about $8 billion in certificates of deposit were eventually heeded by the SEC, which on Tuesday accused Stanford in a civil complaint of "massive ongoing fraud." But at the time, the SEC inquiry came out of the blue, Tidwell and Rawl told Reuters in an interview at a...

WASHINGTON - Texas financier R. Allen Stanford was tracked down Thursday in Virginia, where FBI (web) agents served him with legal papers in a multibillion-dollar fraud case. FBI agents, acting at the request of the Securities and Exchange Commission, served Stanford court orders and other documents, the FBI and the SEC said. -snip-

President Barack Obama's campaign fund moved Wednesday to distance him from the burgeoning scandal involving Texas businessman R. Allen Stanford, donating the value of Stanford's $4,600 campaign contribution to a Chicago charity.

Authorities were trying to track down Texas billionaire financier Allen Stanford on Thursday, as fraud charges against the cricket impresario prompted panicked investors to withdraw cash from his banks..... Two days after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Stanford, 58, of perpetrating "a fraud of shocking magnitude," officials were still in the dark about his whereabouts - as were close members of his family....