© 2010 Southern Cross Publications

Made by Serif

Robert Hoffman was hired in the mid-1990s to start up a daily newspaper on the Caribbean island of Antigua. The newspaper, The Antigua Sun, belonged to R. Allen Stanford. Once knighted by the little nation, Stanford began calling himself Sir Allen and told Forbes he was worth $2.2 billion.

 

On February 17, 2009, the Securities & Exchange Commission of the United States charged Sir Allen with more than two dozen counts of fraud. He was arrested and jailed a few weeks later by the FBI.

 

Authorities claimed Sir Allen was running a Ponzi scheme, selling worthless certificates of deposit around the world at inflated and impossible interest rates through his Stanford International Bank in Antigua.

 

Today, Sir Allen is languishing in federal prison in Houston, Texas. His trial is set for January 2011.

 

Hoffman describes his time working under the volatile and egomaniacal Stanford and explains how Sir Allen’s voluptuous life style and his hunger for publicity spun a fatal web of deceit and conceit.