Looks like the SEC actually moved on this one.

[randomness]

The financial blogs have been buzzing about R. Allen Stanford and his Stanford International Bank for some time now. Today, the U. S. Marshals raided his Houston offices. The SEC filed "to halt a massive, ongoing fraud orchestrated by R. Allen Stanford and James Davis and executed through companies they control".

Backstory at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/business/18stanford.html, which says:

[T]he Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday accused Robert Allen Stanford, the chief of the Stanford Financial Group, of fraud in the sale of about $8 billion of high-yielding certificates of deposit held in the firm’s bank in Antigua.

Shortly after 10 a.m. Central time, about 40 police officers and other law enforcement officials simultaneously entered Stanford Group’s two office buildings in Houston.

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/02/17/52576/the-full-sec-complaint-against-stanford/ has a series of blog posts on the group.

The SEC complaint filed against R. Allen Stanford and his companies is at http://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2009/comp20901.pdf?bcsi_scan_447638299E31E942=Dp61twMoOKBnAMQdCH19eAoAAACtCX0M&bcsi_scan_filename=comp20901.pdf

After Bernie Madoff, I think the SEC simply had to be seen to do something. (The Times article touches on that as well.)

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BTW, if you don't follow solarbird, you might want to consider it. She has oodles of interesting financial tidbits on a daily basis.