Bloomberg has some good details about Jim Davis, Allen Stanford’s Number 2 man, who, along with his boss, has been charged with orchestrating a massive Ponzi scheme.
In mid-January, Davis — who still lives in the region of northern Mississippi where he was born — sent a text message to the youth pastor of a local church he helped start, telling him: “I’m praying for you.”
Among church congregants, Davis, known by some as Mr. Jim, was viewed as God-fearing and honest, according to Ethan Nanney, an elder at the church. In fact, Nanney told Bloomberg, Davis started the church, whose pastor is black, because he wanted a place where black and white people could come together. Davis is also on the board of Memphis’s National Civil Rights Museum, which is located at the motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
Not that he lived an entirely humble lifestyle. The church was started in a “carriage house” behind Davis’ four-storey home outside the town of Baldwyn. Reports Bloomberg:
Named Loribel, the residence is gated and boasts a pond, Ionic columns and a widow’s walk.
The church seems to also have served a more earthly purpose. One former employee of Stanford Financial told Bloomberg that Davis sometimes used relationships made at church to recruit customers for Stanford’s certificates of deposits, which earned those implausible rates of return.
And it’s already been reported that it was at church that Davis met Laura Pendergest-Holt, another Stanford exec who’s been charged along with Stanford and Davis. Pendergest-Holt also faces criminal charges stemming from alleged false statements she made to investigators.
As we noted earlier, Davis spoke to SEC and FBI investigators yesterday, and his lawyer has said he’s cooperating with both probes.