Legal issues tangle Stanford victims' hopes of recovery
by Bill Lodge - Advocate (excerpt)

The case that sent Houston entrepreneur R. Allen Stanford to federal prison for 110 years for swindling $7 billion from thousands of people in Louisiana and elsewhere is making legal history.

Court records in Washington, D.C., show the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is doing something it has never done before — attempting to force the financial-industry-funded Securities Investor Protection Corp. to cover investor losses.

The commission has statutory authority over the SIPC, which is required to bail out investors who lose money in some instances when their broker-dealers fail.