Grisham says real-life swindlers outdo his fiction
(Reporting by Ned Barnett in Chapel Hill, N.C.)
Author John Grisham, master of the legal thriller, says the real-life fraud scandals involving Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford trump even the gripping fiction of his novels.
He says he is fascinated by the accusations of multibillion dollar Ponzi schemes, involving tangled webs of companies and offshore banks, which have put Wall Street financier Madoff in jail for 150 years and are also leveled against Texas billionaire and sports entrepreneur Stanford.
Madoff pleaded guilty in March to a $65 billion fraud and was jailed in June, while Stanford has pleaded not guilty to charges that he bilked investors in a $7 billion swindle.
“The thing about Bernie (Madoff) and Allen Stanford, you know, if I wrote that stuff nobody would believe it,” Grisham told reporters at the opening of the North Carolina Literary Festival at the University of North Carolina.
Lawyer-turned-author Grisham, 54, known for his works like “The Firm,” “The Testament” and “The Runaway Jury,” which probe such human failings as greed and deceit, said his imagination is no match for the stories behind real super swindlers.
“I just can’t get enough of this stuff … I love their stories — not for the human drama and the pain and suffering of it, that’s terrible — just for the sheer brazenness of these crooks,” he said.
Allen Stanford: Tales from Mexia
Trying to report the comprehensive story of Allen Stanford, the Texan billionaire that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has accused of perpetrating an $8 billion fraud, is like trying to reassemble 100 documents after they’ve been through the shredder.
Stanford’s business and sports interests and the subsequent investigations into them stretch across the ocean, through numerous government agencies and courts and into the lives of people in places big and small.
As usual, there was too much to fit into any one story.
Last week I flew from New York to Houston and drove about three hours north to Mexia, Texas the small town where Stanford grew up. I wrote about Mexia here, and about Stanford’s complicated personal ties — apparently he charmed women as well as investors and has left an angry trail of both, including an estranged wife, several girlfriends and six children with four women.
Here are some thoughts and notes from Mexia. First tip: if you pronounce the town’s name correctly (Muh-HAY-uh) you win points with the townspeople.
Stanford and Goswick
Stanford’s board included Chairman Emeritus James Stanford, Allen Stanford’s father, who is 81 years old, and gets around with a walker. His office is a little white rancher on the side of the main road heading into town from the interstate. There’s a tiny hole in one of the windows that James’s wife and Allen’s stepmother Billie said came from a BB or pellet gun. No, it’s due to disgruntled investors, she said. It was more likely poor neighborhood kids playing with guns again.
Alan Stanford and Anna Nicole Smith had something else in common…they both had inflated assets.
Stanford whistleblowers tell of concerns, perks
For Mark Tidwell and Charles Rawl, former employees who filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Texas billionaire Allen Stanford’s financial empire, this week’s move by U.S. securities regulators to charge Stanford and two associates with “massive, ongoing fraud” brought a certain kind of redemption. But for the thousands of investors who now cannot tap into their accounts until a court-appointed receiver sorts out claims, it could be a long wait.
Tidwell and Rawl both worked in Stanford’s posh Houston headquarters until December 2007, when they say they were forced to leave. In an interview with Reuters in Houston on Feb. 19. 2009, the two talked about their growing concerns while working at Stanford, as well as the silver-spooned culture that prevailed. Click here to hear audio
Mark Tidwell, 40, a former senior vice president at Stanford, recalls a plush dining room with a new menu every day, and perks aplenty for employees fortunate enough to make the “Top Producers Club.”
“You know it’s different when you pull in because there is a security guard that greets every car that pulls into the parking garage,” Tidwell said.
Photo credit: Reuters/Chris Baltimore (Tidwell, left, and Rawl, right, pictured at a Houston law office on Feb. 19, 2009)
Allen Stanford: Fraudster or just “Crazy for Cricket”?
Allen Stanford’s financial empire is in chaos after the SEC charged that he and his partners were perpetrating a “massive” fraud, but only four months ago things appeared much sunnier, at least in a glowing Forbes profile that described his investment strategy as “sure and steady.”
The profile, “Crazy for Cricket,” was part of the Forbes 400 ranking of the richest Americans (Stanford was #205). It outlines his goal of competing within five years with the likes of UBS and Wachovia — although to be fair, the former company has had its own problems and Stanford managed to outlast the latter.
An exodus of wealth advisers is already under way, says Stanford, as writedowns and layoffs mount at those firms. In a single week in August, he says, his new Richmond, Va. office hired ex-UBS employees with clients representing $1 billion in assets. “There are a lot of deals to be made in financial services–banks, brokerages, trusts,” he says. Another industry he’s eyeing is desalination plants in developing countries like China: “We’re very bullish on making a lot of money on water in the next 20 years.”
The article also has some colorful details on Stanford Financial employee requirements — all were required to “wear a golden Stanford eagle pin at all times” — and Stanford’s religious beliefs:
Then there’s the rumor that Stanford carries around a vial of blood drawn from a Catholic priest with stigmata–Christ-like wounds. Not quite true. But one night in 1993 a friend called him up and asked if he could borrow a plane to fly an injured priest to New York for medical treatment. According to Stanford, the priest had scars on his hands and feet and oil gushing from his wounds. He remembers touching his head to the priest’s and experiencing a “life-changing” surge that strengthened his faith in God. The priest survived, but Stanford has lost touch with him.
It looks like SirGerald has a personal vendetta against Sidney Camper & Ed Berkhoff as he is constantly taking advantage of any article on Stanford in any publication to repeatedly make accusations against the above referenced people, which I have not heard from before, and still do not see any relevant comments or articles against them. Very interesting SirGerald?????
Grisham is great.