Prosecutors say alleged Ponzi-schemer Allen Stanford is faking amnesia to avoid standing trial, according to a medical report.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregg Costa says Stanford scored “sufficiently low” on neuropsychological tests “as to evidence that he either was not trying or was faking,” Bloomberg reports. He is scheduled for a hearing on Monday to determine whether he is mentally fit to stand trial for allegedly orchestrating a $7 billion Ponzi Scheme in January.
According to Costa, a doctor who examined Stanford “concluded that Stanford’s performance indicated that he was ‘blatantly simulating cognitive defects/known to be malingering,’”
U.S. District Judge David Hittner had delayed the trial, which was initially scheduled for last January, after three doctors testified that Stanford was unfit to stand trial, citing addiction to anti-anxiety drugs, depression and sustained damage from a head wound that he received in a prison assault in 2009.
Ali Fazel, Stanford’s attorney, told Bloomberg that Stanford’s team believes that the “report the government is citing doesn’t indicate what they say it does.”
“The accused’s mental condition has not so improved as to permit the proceedings to go forward,” Fazel said in a filing.
Jillian Rayfield
Jillian Rayfield is a Reporter/Blogger for TPM, and started as a News Intern in May 2009. She graduated from Cornell University in May 2008 with a degree in Film, and worked as a Research Assistant for a market research firm in London in between.
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