SEC to Stanford: "Hahahohoandheehee"

Dick DeGuerin (left) and Allen Stanford (Michael Stravato for The New York Times)

Well, full marks for chutzpah to Allen Stanford. As the Financial Times reports (h/t TPM), the Securities and Exchange Commission has now tattled to a federal judge that two days after the government ordered his assets frozen, Stanford wrote several checks totalling over a quarter-million dollars to a Las Vegas hotel-and-casino -- which checks Bellagio cashed a few days later.

"So, yo' honah," suggests the SEC, "we don't rightly think you should cotton to this suggestion that you need to free up $10 million of his victims' money to pay this boy's lawyer" (or words to that effect). ABC News follows up with even an even greater amazement: in the single instance known to recorded history, said lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, is mum.

If I had to, I'd guess Stanford purchased a quarter-mil-sized pile of chips to give to DeGuerin to cash. But why and how the bank(s) -- which? where? -- honored these checks a whole week after his accounts were (very publicly) frozen are questions I can't begin to answer.

-- lotus