Allen Stanford Can’t Get Anything Accomplished Under These Conditions

Posted on July 28, 2009 by Caleb Newquist

It’s bad enough that Allen Stanford can’t get out of jail in order to properly prepare his defense but now he’s dealing with what may be a preview of what happens if he’s found guilty of running a Ponzi scheme.
It’s bad enough that there isn’t any cricket coverage in prison but the walking gun show has complained about day to day annoyances like the lack of air conditioning in his prison cell, which he shares with 8 to 10 of his closest friends and also a power outage which likely prevented him from reading How to Win Friends and Influence People (The Prison Edition).
Sir Allen discovers there’s no air conditioning in jail [FT Alphaville]

Fraud

If Your Accountant Marries a Stripper, Should You Assume There’s a Ponzi Scheme Behind It?

Caleb Newquist
August 3, 2010

Not that it’s impossible for an accountant to score a trophy wife – a former Scores Dancer, no less – but observers of accountant/business manager-cum-Ponzi Schemer du jour (allegedly!), Kenneth I. Starr are pretty confident that it was a decent sign of things going in the wrong direction.

Vanity Fair’s article on “not that Ken Starr” gets a lot of perspective from people that knew Starr, including Blackstone co-founder, Pete Peterson, ” Did something in the way of a profound midlife crisis trigger this behavior?”

But of course, there are people that are more forthright:

Like a Greek chorus, his shocked clients pointed as one to the lavishly endowed Diane, for whom, the indictment notes, Starr purchased more than $400,000 of jewelry from bling jeweler to the rap world Jacob Arabo. “When your business manager marries a stripper,” says one rueful client, “that’s a tell.”

All The Best Victims [Vanity Fair]