March 10, 2009

The court-appointed receiver for Stanford Financial Group has notified the state that it has laid off 174 employees in Florida – 147 of them in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties – and closing its offices statewide .A total of 1,000 employees, or about 85 percent of the company’s domestic workforce, were laid off nationwide

The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused company Chairman Robert Allen Stanford, as well as Chief Financial Officer Jim Davis and Chief Investment Officer Laura Pendergest-Holt, of running a Ponzi scheme and misappropriating as much as $1.6 billion of investors’ funds.“ After a review of the circumstances, the receiver concluded that continuing employment for these employees is not in the interest of conserving and preserving the value of the estate because there are insufficient resources to continue to compensate all present employees,” said a notice posted on the receiver’s Web site.