is actually hidden further down in the article but they try to downplay their massive failure by growling like guard dogs now, vis:
Pursuant to the SEC’s request for emergency relief for the benefit of defrauded investors, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor entered a temporary restraining order, froze the defendants’ assets, and appointed a receiver to marshal those assets.
“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.”
Via the ever-so-excellent CalculatedRisk.
A few paragraphs later in the article, quoted by the newspaper not the SEC spokeman, is the fact that this $8 billion fraud has been building for the last 15 years.
Rose Romero, Regional Director of the SEC’s Fort Worth Regional Office, added, “We are alleging a fraud of shocking magnitude that has spread its tentacles throughout the world.”
A shocking magnitude less than .2 times that of Madoff’s that they also didn’t notice for 8+ years.
The real quote from the SEC:
ZZZzzzzzzz * What? Huh? FRAUD?~!?~? Holy shit!! WTF didn’t anyone TELL us about this?
The sad thing is people were complaining about these frauds the whole time (at least in the case of Madoff), just no one cared because he was paying the right government-backed rating cartels to tell everyone that he was coo’.
Tags: investing in Antigua should have been your first warning sign