HOUSTON —The dreams of people saving for retirement or for their children’s education were ruined as Texas financier R. Allen Stanford used money they deposited in his Caribbean bank to instead support his lavish billionaire lifestyle, a prosecutor said Tuesday at his fraud trial.
But one of Stanford’s attorneys told jurors the financier was a resourceful businessman whose financial empire, which spanned the U.S., the Caribbean and Latin America, was real and paid investors every penny that was promised to them.
Prosecutor Gregg Costa said during his opening statement that Stanford’s business empire was built on smoke and mirrors and that the financier used lies, theft and bribes to bilk investors out of more than $7 billion over 20 years. He said the scheme was centered on sales of certificates of deposit from a bank Stanford owned on the Caribbean island of Antigua, which promised substantially higher rates of return on the CDs than U.S. banks and promised investors their money was safe.
Denver Post staff and wire reports
