Yet another major fraud case has emerged

Yesterday, a caravan of cars and trucks carrying federal authorities pulled up to the headquarters of the Stanford Group in Houston. They went inside and shut down what the regulators described as a “massive ongoing fraud” stretching from the Caribbean to Texas, and around the world.

The Stanford Group is an investment firm ran by Robert Allen Stanford. He may be just another wealthy financier. But, in the breezy money haven of Antigua, he was an influential adviser to the local financial banks, decorated with a knighthood, and courted by Antigua government officials.

The status of the Standford Group’s investments in as much as $8 billion in high-yielding certificates of deposit held in the firm’s bank in Antigua, which the Securities and Exchange Commission, in a civil suit, said Mr. Stanford and two colleagues fraudulently peddled to scores of investors.

Also unknown Tuesday was the whereabouts of Robert Stanford. His financial activities on the tiny island had raised eyebrows among American authorities as far back as a decade ago. But, nothing was done.

Like Bernard Madoff, who is accused of operating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, Robert Stanford offered investment opportunities that sounded almost too good to be true: promises of lucrative returns on relatively safe certificates of deposit that were often more than twice the going rate offered by mainstream banks.

Regulators claim the Stanford Group lulled investors into believing the Certificate of Deposit (C.D.) purchases were safe by advertising investments in “liquid” securities that could be bought and sold easily. Stanford Group said it could pay higher rates on the C.D.’s because of the consistently high returns it made on investor assets. And it claimed to be safe, thanks to monitoring by a team of more than 20 analysts and yearly audits of the investments by regulators in Antigua. None of that was true, according to the S.E.C.’s complaint.

So, once Robert Stanford surfaces, he’ll face charges and prove the money of the depositors is still there or he’ll have to face the consequences. Whatever that is.