Last scam defendant sentenced to prison
The final defendant in a $7 billion investment fraud scheme involving Stanford International Bank was sentenced to federal prison Wednesday in Houston, according a Justice Department news release.
Leroy King, the former chief of Antigua’s Financial Services Regulatory Commission, was extradited to the U.S. in 2019 after being a fugitive since 2009. The 74year-old pleaded guilty Jan. 30 to conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice for getting in the way of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation of the Ponzi scheme.
U.S. District Judge David Hittner ordered King to serve 10 years in prison, which is an upward departure from the statutory maximum sentence of five years.
King’s attorney, Marc Carter, called the sentence “unusually harsh” and said he plans to appeal. He said King is old and in ill health and he already served 10 years under house arrest in Antigua while awaiting a ruling on his extradition.
He was unaware of Stanford’s scheme, which already was in full motion when he assumed his government post, but co-defendant James Davis, the architect of the Ponzi scheme was sentenced to half that time in prison,
Carter said. He thanked the Justice Department lawyers for honoring their end of the painstakingly negotiated plea deal by not asking the judge to hand down a sentence above the guideline range.
King, of Dickerson Bay, Antigua, is a dual citizen of the United States and Antigua.
In 2002, he was administrator and CEO of a government agency in Antigua where he had regulatory oversight of Stanford International Bank Limited’s investment portfolio, including its financial reports and its responses to requests by foreign regulators, including requests from the SEC for information and documents about the company’s operations.
The SEC in 2005 began investigating R. Allen Stanford, the former chairman of the bank’s
board of directors, and his financial group and sought documents and information about investments from the Antiguan government agency King oversaw.
King was charged along with Stanford with accepting more than $100,000 in bribes from Stanford in exchange for ignoring the actual value of the bank’s assets and aiding in the obstruction of the SEC investigation, officials said.
King admitted in his plea that Stanford paid him more than $500,000 in bribes in the course of the conspiracy. The bank tycoon also gave King multiple flights on jets he and his entities owned. He also gave King tickets
to Super Bowl XXXVIII in Houston in 2004 and Super Bowl XL in Detroit in 2006.
When the SEC asked for his help, King wrote that his agency “had no authority to act in the manner requested and would itself be in breach of law if it were to accede to your request,” according to the news release. But the agency did have authority to aid the SEC.
Stanford was convicted by a federal jury in June 2012 of orchestrating the scheme over a 20-year period, misappropriating $7 billion to pay for his personal business. He is serving a 110-year prison term. Five others were convicted for participating in the scheme and received federal prison sentences ranging from three to 20 years.