How Allen Stanford humiliated the cricket establishment

How did Allen Stanford, a man running one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history, con the English cricketing establishment on the international stage? This is a story of greed, fraud and humiliation for English cricket, but what happened?

Born in Texas in 1950, Stanford spent many years attempting to have success in business, eventually capitalising on the booming real estate market of the 1980s and taking over his father’s company to start making his fortune.

In the late 80s, Stanford moved to the Caribean and set up a series of banks that became prominent throughout the islands.

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At some point, Stanford fell in love with cricket, with the sport popular throughout the Caribbean.

Stanford’s love of cricket grew, and he decided to invest in the sport in his adopted homeland of Antigua. He built a new stadium and hosted a tournament featuring the best sides from around the Caribean, with Trinidad and Tobago winning the inaugural event.

By 2008 the cricketing landscape would greatly shift following the launch of the Indian Premier League, a chance for players to make huge sums of money simply playing T20 cricket. Despite what looked to be a good deal for its players, the English Cricket Board forbade any English involvement.

The ECB was in desperate need to act to stop a players’ rebellion at their IPL embargo, they simply couldn’t force players to turn down sums of money that large. In steps Allen Stanford.

Stanford landed his helicopter on the storied outfield of Lord’s cricket ground, much to the chagrin of the MCC members. Once there he met with cricketing icons and ECB members and concocted a plan.

From this meeting, the Standford Super Series was born, with the English cricket team competing against the Stanford Superstars, essentially the West Indies national team.

The tournament format was simple, one match, 20 overs per side and $20,000,000 to the winning team. Or, the 'Stanford 20/20 for 20' as it became known.

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The undercard for the big match was between the current English T20 champions, the Middlesex Crusaders and Trinidad and Tobago. The matches all took place at the Stanford Cricket Ground in Antigua, hastily constructed and not up to standard. The Middlesex captain Shaun Udal stated, "I have not known a ground where the visibility is as bad", as reported by BBC Sport. 

The match went poorly for England, bowled out for just 99 and losing by 10 wickets. Unfortunately for England and the ECB, this embarrassment wasn’t just on the pitch, with Stanford seen flirting with various partners of the English team. The Caribbean players all won nearly $2,000,000 each.

Just a few months after the fateful cricket match, there were reports the FBI were looking into Stanford’s banks given the exceptionally high and consistent returns he was making on investments.

In February 2009, federal agents stormed Stanford’s offices, after a thorough examination, the Texan was charged by The Securities and Exchange Commission with "massive ongoing fraud". This related to his now $8 billion investment scheme. Stanford attempted to flee the country.

The SEC investigation discovered Stanford had been committing a "massive Ponzi scheme", using new investors’ money to pay the earlier investors and so on. According to the SEC, "Stanford International Bank's financial statements, including its investment income, are fictional,".

Stanford would eventually be sentenced to 110 years in jail for his crimes and fined $5.9 billion for his crimes. After the collapse of his banks, many in the Caribbean lost everything they had, with assets frozen they could withdraw any funds, this included some of the winners of the Stanford Super Series.

Allen Stanford was a true fraudster who conned one of the most powerful cricket boards in the world and left them embarrassed, but even worse than that he ruined normal people’s lives, committing, as Peter Henning of the New York Times wrote, “economic homicide.”

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