The view from Mt. Welcome in St Croix, Virgin Islands is spectacular – you can see Christiansted Harbor and Buck Island.

     If in January of 2009 you happened to drive the dirt road leading up to Mt. Welcome, you might have noticed a distinguished looking fifty-ish man burning papers in a steel drum. Wonder what was in those papers?

     That man was Allan Stanford, once the pride of Houston and the Virgin Islands, whose very name once rivaled Trump as a brand for luxury. He was so rich he bought an island off Antigua for 63 million and kept residences in Houston, Miami, and St. Croix. But he might just as well have been Icarus – he was headed for just as sudden a fall.

     Yes, in the mid 2000s you could purchase certificates of deposit from Stanford’s bank with a 12% yield. Or you could invest in the mega-luxury resort he planned to build on that island off Antigua.

      Only problem is, Stanford was running a Ponzi scheme and the clock was ticking fast.

      He was brought down by a woman – a former girlfriend demanding more child support money. She filed court documents that Stanford was worth millions more than he claimed and the feds began to investigate.

      But rumors of the investigation soured investors who stopped buying those 12% CDs and tried to withdraw their money. Stanford desperately tried to show a healthy balance sheet for his company. Remember that $63 million dollar island? Well, he sold it to a company he created which sold it to another company he owned and back and forth until the last buyer paid $3.2 billion for the island. He also flew to Tripoli to persuade Khadafy to invest – but Khadafy was too smart.

      That didn’t fool the feds for long and Stanford was arrested and jailed without bond in the Joe Corley Detention Center in Houston. Joe Corley is one of those “for profit” private prison facilities. To keep profits up, they decided to stick Stanford in a cell with 14 other inmates.
     
      Turns out these other inmates did not care much for Stanford, and one day they beat him severely in his cell and then kicked him as he lay on the floor.

      Now blind in one eye, suffering from brain damage, and a damaged spleen, Stanford is no longer competent. A celebrity legal team including Allan Dershowitz filed a motion to get him out on bond but keeping with Stanford’s bad luck they used the wrong font size for the motion and the Texas judge removed it from the docket.

     Recently, the trial judge has determined Stanford is not competent to stand trial and has delayed his trial indefinitely. The feds never did find where he had hidden his money. Wonder what was in the those papers he was burning in St. Croix – a Swiss bank account somewhere? We may never know.