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US Court Shuts SEC Lawsuit Over Allen Stanford's $7.2 Billion Ponzi Scheme

US Court shuts SEC lawsuit over Allen Stanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme
Directs the financier and his two former colleagues to pay sums that will largely go uncollected
The US District Court has ended the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC’s) 16-year-old lawsuit over Allen Stanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
Chief Judge David Godbey of the Dallas federal court imposed a $5.9 billion civil fine on Stanford, serving a 110-year sentence after being convicted in 2012 of defrauding about 18,000 investors. Additionally, Stanford Financial Group's former chief financial officer James Davis must pay $17.66 million (including a $5 million fine), and former chief accounting officer Gilberto Lopez has to pay $3.42 million, for their role in the scam.
The judge said there was "no just reason for delay" in ordering the payments and closing the case.
Stanford was accused of fraudulent high-yielding certificates of deposit through his Antigua-based Stanford International Bank for 20 years. He used investors’ money in risky investments and to fund his lavish lifestyle.
The judge also deemed billions of dollars owed by various Stanford entities satisfied by court-appointed receiver Ralph Janvey's recovery of over $2.5 billion for fraud victims, including $1.2 billion from Toronto-Dominion Bank.
Once considered a billionaire, in 2010, Stanford was declared a destitute. Now 74, he is ineligible for release from prison until 2103. His friend, Davis was the top government witness at Stanford's trial. He testified against his former college roommate and in 2013, was sentenced to five years in prison. In the same year, Lopez was convicted separately and sentenced to 20 years.
The SEC sued Stanford in February 2009, two months after the late swindler Bernard Madoff was criminally charged with running a much larger Ponzi scheme.