Stanford victims ask Cassidy for help

• By BILL LODGE
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jul 10, 2009 - Page: 1A

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Panicked investors from Baton Rouge and around the nation asked U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, for help Thursday against a court-appointed receiver planning to take back money they received from the failed Stanford International Bank.

“Don’t victimize the victims twice,” Cassidy responded during a telephone conference that lasted for more than an hour.

Prior to the conference, Cassidy said most of the investors “are not multimillionaires. They’re hardworking middle-class people who lost out.”

Cassidy said he can only make requests on behalf of the investors and it is up to the receiver and judge to decide whether to go after investor assets.

He said many of the investors lost much of their retirement savings after receiving relatively small interest payments.

Some Baton Rouge investors have said they also will lose their homes if they are required to return interest payments that already have been spent on doctor bills or other expenses.

“When does this whole fiasco stop?” Baton Rouge resident Jason Graham asked Thursday.

Graham added that it appears “no one knows what the hell’s going on here.”

Robert Allen Stanford’s Caribbean bank closed earlier this year after the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged he stole more than $9 billion from thousands of investors in scores of countries.

Stanford, 60, was indicted last month by a federal grand jury in Houston on charges carrying possible penalties totaling more than a century in prison. He professed innocence, but remains in custody. A federal judge denied his release on bond.

More than 1,000 investors in south Louisiana lost more than $1 billion they placed with Stanford’s bank on the island of Antigua, according to Baton Rouge lawyer Phillip W. Preis.

But those losses could be increased this summer by action in a Dallas federal court.
Dallas lawyer Ralph S. Janvey was appointed by a federal judge in February to seize and manage as many Stanford assets as possible.

Janvey recently laid claim to millions of dollars in principal and interest that had been deposited with Stanford by former Major League pitcher Greg Maddux and several other former and current professional baseball players.