Judge unfreezes assets of Stanford investors
Nearly 12,000 people, groups with $250K or less with can arrange to transfer their accounts.
DALLAS (CNN) -- A federal judge has unfrozen the assets of about 12,000 people and groups who invested in companies of R. Allen Stanford, who is accused in a $9.2 billion fraud scheme.
The decision means that most customers with account balances of $250,000 or less as of the end of February can arrange to transfer their accounts to a new broker-dealer.
Federal Judge David C. Godbey issued an order Thursday that will unfreeze the assets as of Monday. The court froze a variety of assets related to Stanford last month, after federal financial investigators accused him of involvement in a fraud scheme.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has said that Stanford was behind "a fraud of shocking magnitude." FBI agents served Stanford with SEC papers accusing him and three of his companies of orchestrating a $9.2 billion investment fraud scheme.
Stanford does not face criminal charges. Investigators have charged the chief investment officer of a firm headed by Stanford with obstruction of a government proceeding.
An SEC complaint alleges that the fraud centered on a certificates-of-deposit program in which Stanford International Bank promised "improbable and unsubstantiated high interest rates."
Stanford International Bank, based in Antigua, allegedly acted through a network of Stanford Group Company financial advisers to sell at least $8 billion of certificates of deposit to investors.
The bank boasted a unique investment strategy that it said had allowed it to receive double-digit returns on its investments for the past 15 years, the SEC said.
"We are alleging a fraud of shocking magnitude that has spread its tentacles throughout the world," Rose Romero, director of the SEC's Fort Worth regional office, said in a written statement. 
