sport news Fraudster Allen Stanford reveals all 14 years after his $20million showdown ... trends now
There are two worlds that exist in the complicated mind of Allen Stanford. One sees him on horseback at George Bush’s Texas ranch, enjoying a laugh with England players’ wives and landing at Lord’s in a helicopter to vaunt his multi-billion-dollar empire.
The other sees him repeating ‘I’m innocent’ many times a week, worshipping Kevin Pietersen and, despite serving a 110-year prison sentence, maintaining his vision of being involved in cricket once again as he enters an eighth decade.
The 72-year-old, jailed for orchestrating the second-largest investor fraud in US history which saw victims rinsed of $7billion (£5.7bn), has only given one previous interview since his 2009 incarceration.
Realities of life in jail, where Stanford spends most of his days stewing away in an 8ft by 13ft cell with only a Bible for solace, could not be more marked for a man known for his flamboyant lifestyle.
‘I was running a good ship and doing things ethically and honestly, when the US government came in and said, “You’re nothing but a damn, sorry son of a bitch stealing from widows and orphans”,’ he claims.
On Thursday, he begins a final attempt to be freed on appeal by the US Supreme Court despite a jury convicting him on 13 counts of fraud in 2012.
If he is successful, he will attempt to return to pastures that once saw him charming the ECB into signing an infamous deal for five Twenty20 internationals involving England and the West Indies. England players apparently still write to him and one West Indian star has visited him in jail.
Fraudster Allen Stanford has opened up exclusively to Sportsmail on the $20million showdown that shamed cricket
Stanford (centre, bottom row) poses with the England cricket team in 2008
Lives were irretrievably ruined, many of his victims suffer to this day, with thousands of pensioners having lost their life savings.
But somehow, Stanford sees himself as the biggest victim of all.
On the phone from his maximum-security Coleman II federal prison in Sumterville, Florida — home to former USA gymnastics coach Larry Nassar, jailed for sexually assaulting young stars, and serial killer Scott Lee Kimball, who is believed to have murdered up to 25 people — Stanford is in a positive mood. His family are on the way to visit.
Before talking about why he is where he is, he is eager to talk cricket. It is a sport none of his fellow inmates know anything about but it was the vehicle he used to give his bank a global platform.
‘Over a period of time in the Caribbean, I fell in love with the cricket. I’m not a big proponent of Test cricket,’ he tells Sportsmail in a steady Texan drawl.
‘My first exposure to it was back when (World Series Cricket founder) Kerry Packer was stirring up the pot. I was not that enamoured with something that can take five days and not get a result.
‘But when I became aware of not just the one-day 50-over matches, but the much shorter three-hour version of Twenty20, I could see its quick application to the sport that could rival the sports I grew up with — American football, basketball and baseball. And especially when you pit island against island, the rivalry that goes with that, everyone dressed up in their national colours and just the excitement — it is like a big Mardi Gras parade. We (West Indies) were the champions of the world back in the Nineties when Viv Richards and the guys were playing, then we just fell off.
Stanford created the ‘20/20 for 20’ match which pitted the Stanford Superstars, made up of West Indies players, against an England XI in Antigua in 2008
‘I had a lot of admiration for Kerry Packer. He did things his way, he was an inspiration. He dressed the guys in pink and all this. I wanted to revitalise this sport in the Caribbean where I saw these young talented guys who were not given an opportunity to develop and I thought the vehicle of T20 cricket could do it.’
Australian media tycoon Packer, whose tournaments ran between 1977 and 1979, lured the world’s best with extravagant pay and laid the blueprint for Stanford.
Stanford rebuilt a ground in Antigua in 2004 for his Stanford 20/20 tournaments, in which Caribbean islands were pitted against each other in 2006 and 2008. It was the foundation to the 2008 Stanford Super Series — featuring the Stanford Superstars, made up of West Indies players, against an England XI including Pietersen, Andrew Flintoff and Graeme Swann, all competing in a ‘20/20 for 20’ match.
It got its name from the $20m cash pot. The 11 players on the winning side would each take home $1m, with $2m split between management and squad players and $7m between the England and West Indies cricket boards. The likes of then ECB chairman Giles Clarke, Sir Ian Botham and Sir Viv Richards posed with the Texan on June 11, 2008 as they all grinned around a stack of notes totalling $20m (then around £10m).
That was after he casually plonked his helicopter on the Home of Cricket turf. ‘Lord’s cash landing’ was the headline emblazoned on Sportsmail’s back page. ‘The English were very gracious and hospitable, even after I landed a helicopter on Lord’s!’ he chuckles. ‘Which was not my idea. We had a firm that was hired in England to promote the series. We had our ads on the black cabs and they said it would be really something if you fly this helicopter to Lord’s.
‘They came up with the idea. I agreed and said, “OK if it’s not going to get me in trouble!” It created a lot of interest.
Stanford's helicopter lands on Lord's turf ahead of a press conference in 2008
The Texan exits his helicopter after landing his helicopter on the Home of Cricket turf
‘Everything was a fond memory. For me, that final was, “We’re going to kick England’s butt. I have the best young players in the world and we are going to show it” and we did play with some of the proven talent like Ramnaresh Sarwan and Chris Gayle and some newcomers.’
England were thrashed, and pilloried. All out for 99 and a 10-wicket defeat on the pitch, a PR shambles with accusations of greed off it. Nearly 14 years on from that winter, many will not recall the details of the match but will remember the goings-on in the stands one week earlier, involving the England players’ wives and girlfriends during the Middlesex Crusaders v Trinidad and Tobago game.
Stanford giggles and explains: ‘I had had a few drinks which people offered me. I was in a happy spirit and these young ladies were sitting together. If I had known they were the girlfriends and wives of the players — I think one was actually pregnant — there is no way I would have gone into that beehive!
‘But they said, “Come over here, we want to get a picture”. So I went over and there were three seats and four of them and me, so I said I’ll kneel down. They crowded around and said, “Here, sit on my knee”.
‘I was laughing and it was just a happy, light-hearted moment you know and I smiled at them and that was about it. It probably
