Jury starts 4th day of deliberations on charges vs. Stanford

Jurors returned to federal court in Houston this morning to continue their deliberations in the R. Allen Stanford fraud case. Houston Chronicle reporter Terri Langford, who was in the courtroom for the past five weeks of testimony, continues to provide updates on the jury’s deliberations at her Twitter account here. The case went to the jury late Wednesday, and has deliberated each day since. The four-woman, eight-man jury is not sequestered as it considers the federal government’s 14 counts of fraud-related crimes against the Texas financier. Stanford, who turns 62 later this month, is accused of swindling approximately $7 billion from worldwide customers—an estimated $1 billion of which came from investors in the Baton Rouge area­—who purchased certificates of deposit from his Antigua bank. His Stanford Financial empire stretched from Houston to Venezuela and Europe. If jurors find him guilty on any of the 14 counts, the same jury will consider the federal prosecutors’ request to have 36 bank accounts associated with Stanford forfeited to the U.S. government.