Dick DeGuerin, the hard-charging Texas lawyer who just signed on to represent Allen Stanford, isn't pulling any punches.

In an interview with TPMmuckraker moments ago, DeGuerin denied that Stanford was running a Ponzi scheme. And, referring to federal investigators' raids on Stanford offices as the SEC prepared charges last month, DeGuerin played the Nazi card, declaring:

The SEC came in like a bunch of Storm Troopers, which caused a panic, and caused the banks in Venezuela and elsewhere to nationalize his banks, just take them away.

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Yesterday, we noted BusinessWeek reporting that Dick DeGuerin, the high-profile Texas lawyer who has represented Tom DeLay and David Koresh, among other bold-faced names, might have signed up to defend accused massive Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford.

And today, the magazine confirms that DeGuerin is on the case -- and that the official Stanford fight back, after weeks of being portrayed as a corrupt, Gatsby-esque fraud -- is underway.

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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.

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Is the noose tightening?

James Davis, Allen Stanford's number 2, sat down with FBI and SEC investigators yesterday, Davis' lawyer, David Finn, told Bloomberg. Finn said earlier this week that Davis would fully cooperate with both investigations.

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We probably should have seen this coming.

Billionaire Texas banker Allen Stanford is considering hiring Dick DeGuerin -- the heavy-hitting Texas defense lawyer who has represented a string of big-name clients, including former House Speaker Tom DeLay -- to defend him on charges that he orchestrated an $8 billion Ponzi scheme, reports BusinessWeek.

The magazine sources that news to "a person familiar with the securities fraud investigation" into Stanford, and adds:

A secretary for DeGuerin says the attorney had been contacted about representing Stanford, but declined to comment further.

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This doesn't sound like good news for Sir Allen...

James Davis, the number two at Stanford Financial Group, is cooperating with the federal civil and criminal probes into the $8 billion Ponzi scheme that both are accused of orchestrating, Davis' lawyer has told (sub. req.) the Wall Street Journal.

That's a shift by the former SFG chief financial officer, who was also Allen Stanford's college roommate. Previously, Davis had taken the fifth, along with Stanford himself, and had refused to provide investigators with key company documents.

To date, Stanford, Davis, and a third Stanford employee, Laura Pendergest-Holt, have been charged in a civil complaint filed by the SEC. But only Pendergest-Holt currently faces criminal charges, relating to obstruction of justice.

That's likely to change. Even Davis' cooperation doesn't appear likely to shield him from facing his own criminal charges. But it can hardly come as welcome news for the cricket-loving billionaire.

No one likes lawyers rifling through their underwear drawer.

Laura Pendergest-Holt, the chief investment officer for Stanford Financial Group -- who has been charged along with Allen Stanford himself and number 2 Jim Davis -- is trying to get overturned a court order that put her assets under the control of a court-appointed receiver.

In an emergency motion, attorneys for Pendergest-Holt wrote that lawyers for the receiver, Ralph Janvey, conducted a raid of her Mississippi home March 2, seizing her family's car, diverting her mail, went through her underwear drawer, and mocked her husband -- telling him he wouldn't be living in the house for long.

The court filing called the move a "stunning act of bad faith", and asked for the assets to be returned form the control of the receiver. It argued that Pendergest-Holt had agreed to the seizure only before she knew that criminal charges would be filed against her. Now that they have been, the seizure violates her constitutional rights, according to the filing.

The filing says:

In effect, the Receiver's lawyers, in the context of the civil case, have conducted a free-wheeling warrantless search of Ms. Pendergest-Holt's home and have taken Ms. Pendergest-Holt's personal property without due process of law. Because the Receiver's lawyers are duty-bound to cooperate with the SEC, DOJ and FBI under the Receivership Order, the Government will no doubt be the primary beneficiary of the Receiver's unlawful search and seizure of Defendant's property.

Pendergest-Holt was charged by the SEC earlier this month with making misrepresentations to the FBI about, among among things, her knowledge of Stanford's portfolio.

In better days, Allen Stanford was, by most accounts, a loqacious and charming figure, wooing clients, lawmakers, and foreign dignitaries alike with the sheer power of his personality.

Now, not so much.

In court documents filed today, Stanford took the fifth, declining to testify in the SEC's complaint against him, in which he is accused of orchestrating an $8 billion Ponzi scheme.

His former college roommate and Number 2 at Stanford Financial Group, Jim Davis, is likewise staying mum, it was reported last week.

We told you earlier today about Allen Stanford's lobbying to get some businesses taxed at the US Virgin Islands rate rather than the US rate. And about how Stanford had lately been in the process of moving his Caribbean headquarters to St. Croix, in the Virgin Islands.

Well, one Virgin Islands paper, the St. Thomas Source, has some more interesting details on those subjects...

The paper reports that, in a speech at a 2007 economic summit in St. Croix, Stanford made his pitch for more favorable tax laws that he said would spur more investment. He sought changes that would have allowed money from companies headquartered in the Virgin Islands (like his own) to flow into the US virtually tax free.

Stanford presented this change as a boon to the whole region:

"If that were to happen, the Caribbean Basin as a whole, and the Virgin Islands in particular, would see serious investment begin to flow in almost overnight."

Stanford even said he brought up the idea to US Treasury Department officials, and hoped to have "draft legislation" ready to present by mid October.

He repeated the pitch at a ceremony to break ground on his new planned Caribbean headquarters in the V.I.

"The law must include all Caribbean-created revenues, as long as the company is headquartered in the Virgin Islands," he told the crowd, which contained local dignitaries and lawmakers.

There is no record of any such legislation being introduced since at least 2005, says the paper.

Allen Stanford may have been accused of orchestrating an $8 billion Ponzi scheme. But maybe things aren't all doom and gloom for his firm.

It looks like Stanford Financial is still hiring -- even in these tough economic times!

The company's Antiguan assets have been seized, but if you want to work in client services, IT, or security(!) on the island, you can still send in your resume.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the firm doesn't seem to have any openings for accountants, or lawyers.

The Houston Chronicle has a takeout on Ben Barnes, the storied Texas power-broker who's been thrust back into the limelight through his work as Allen Stanford's Washington lobbyist.

Barnes -- who didn't return our call when we wanted to talk about this several weeks ago -- reveals one intriguing nugget about what he was up to on Stanford's behalf.

Reports the paper:

[O]ver the past year, [Stanford] was interested in having business taxed at the U.S. Virgin Islands tax rate rather than the U.S. rate, Barnes said. Stanford wanted legislation to promote investment in the Caribbean.

"This was not Allen Stanford's legislation. This was the U.S. Virgin Islands idea because they wanted more people to come down there, earn money there," Barnes said.

No such measure was approved either by Congress or the U.S. Treasury, he said.

It's unclear exactly what this means. Which businesses would this change have applied to? Stanford had assets in the Virgin Islands, but the major part of his business was based in Antigua.

But -- along with Stanford's opposition to efforts to crack down on offshore tax havens -- it's another small piece of evidence that goes to answer the question of what Stanford hoped to get out of his assiduous attention to American lawmakers.

Late Update: We overlooked this, but it seems that Stanford was in the process of moving his operation to the Virgin Islands. In February 2008, he announced plans to break ground on construction of the ominously titled "Stanford Financial Group global management complex," which would "serve as the head office for Stanford's operations in the Caribbean."

Lester Byrd, the Antiguan prime minister with whom Stanford had been worryingly close -- it was through Byrd that Stanford obtained his knighthood -- left office in 2004, and the Texan had chillier relations with his successor.

Are lawmakers who took those Antiguan junkets on Allen Stanford's dime paying a political price back home?

It's hard to say. But John Cornyn and Pete Sessions, the Texas GOP senator and congressman respectively, can't be psyched about this Dallas Morning News editorial.

"What were they thinking?" asks the piece in its lead, pointing out that Cornyn and Sessions must have known when they accepted those trips that Stanford would have been looking to curry favor.

The editors conclude, a bit lamely:

Sessions and Cornyn have donated $9,000 of those funds to charity. They would be wise to donate the rest - and to use better judgment next time.

The paper might have added that Sessions would also be wise to ensure that his staff doesn't misinform reporters about the nature of the congressman's relationship with Stanford.

Still, it's a start.

Just as happened in the Bernard Madoff scandal, we're now starting to hear some heart-wrenching stories from the victims of Allen Stanford's alleged fraud.

One older couple told their tale of woe to a North Texas TV station:

Marsha and Arlie Carter always planned to live out their golden years in Rainbow, Texas, outside Dallas. They sold their software company -- the business they built together from nothing -- to finance their dream.

"We hoped to pass it down to my kids and grandkids," Marsha said.

Then, last month, they turned on the news and learned the company their broker worked for was entangled in a case of massive alleged fraud. All the money associated with Stanford Financial Group was frozen, including about 30,000 brokerage accounts.

That's where the Carters were keeping most of the money they had saved.

"There's a possibility that we might lose the house if we can't have enough income to make the payments on it," Marsha Carter said.

Less tragically, the Dallas Morning News reports that many clients who had brokerage, money-market or mutual fund accounts with Stanford can't get to their money because those accounts have been frozen by a court-appointed receiver.

Reports the paper:

Mark Choate, chief executive of an irrigation landscape company, has a brokerage account that's been frozen for two weeks. "During that time," Choate says, "the stock market has been dropping like a rock, and I haven't been able to do anything about it."

A lawyer for clients like these tells the DMN:

A guy called me Thursday who has all of his net worth tied up in a construction project and meets his payroll through his Stanford accounts. He said, 'Larry, if I don't have access to that money, all these people aren't going to get paid. My construction project will go kaput, and my whole life will be in ruin.'

There's even a suggestion that Stanford may have swindled some of those West Indian cricket players who "won" $1 million each after beating England in a Stanford-organized match last year. In an interview conducted before Stanford's alleged fraud came to light but published this week, one player told (sub. req.) the New Yorker that he had left his prize-money in Stanford's bank, after the billionaire assured him and other players that he would keep it safe.

Meanwhile, a showdown has quietly been brewing, reports the Associated Press, between that court-appointed receiver, Texas lawyer Ralph Janvey, and the government of Antigua, where the Senate voted Friday to seize Stanford's property.

Stanford is Antigua's largest private employer, with about 800 people working for him. So the country's officials are anxious to keep Stanford's businesses in operation, rather than allowing Janvey to use the assets to pay back swindled investors.

Looks like this story could be with us a while...

Remember that bill we told you about last week, the one that was designed to crack down on offshore tax havens and might have helped stop Allen Stanford's alleged $8 billion scam? Well, it's back.

As we reported, the bill, introduced in 2007 by Sen. Carl Levin, died in the Senate Finance committee. A committee aide later told us that Committee chair Max Baucus never took it up because he favored a different approach to the problem.

But now Levin -- joined by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. and Bill Nelson -- has come back with an improved version of the legislation, the "Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act."

According to a press release, the bill now has three new provisions, that would:

(1) treat foreign corporations managed and controlled in the United States as domestic corporations for income tax purposes; (2) close an offshore tax dividend loophole that enables non-U.S persons to dodge payment of U.S. taxes on U.S. stock dividends; and (3) expand the tax return reporting requirements for passive foreign investment corporations (PFICs) to include U.S. persons who don't own a PFIC, but have formed, sent assets to, received assets from, or benefitted from a PFIC.

Baucus has already announced that he intends to introduce his own version of the legislation, that's more targeted at giving the IRS the tools it needs to detect tax cheats. So we'll have to see how that plays out.

But it seems like one silver lining in the Allen Stanford case is that it's gotten lawmakers into gear to try to fix the problem once and for all.

From the start of the Allen Stanford mess, we've sort of had a hunch that the Inter-American Economic Council -- which paid for several Caribbean junkets and other events for US lawmakers -- was largely a creature of the Texas billionaire. And that hunch is looking increasingly accurate.

The Dallas Morning News reports that in 2005, the year the IAEC funded that big trip to Antigua for lawmakers of both parties that we posted pictures of, Stanford Financial provided 85 percent of the IAEC's revenue, according to its president, Barry Featherman.

Featherman also told the DMN that the IAEC raises no money except for the funds it receives from sponsors like Stanford for specific events. In other words, the organization exists, it appears, only to hold events with public officials.

And Featherman added that the group hasn't paid for any trips since 2007, thanks mostly to ethics rules passed by the new Democratic Congress early in that year, which banned House members from accepting free trips on private planes.

There are some other interesting nuggets in the DMN story. The paper reports that Tom DeLay "made at least 11 trips on Stanford planes between 2003 and 2006, according to federal campaign finance records."

And remember how the office of Texas GOP congressman Pete Sessions first claimed that Sessions didn't know Stanford personally -- a claim that was undone when we posted pictures of the two men schmoozing on that 2005 trip to Antigua? Well it looks like Sessions was getting more than just a nice Caribbean trip out of Stanford. The DMN reports that in 2004 when, thanks to redistricting, Sessions was in a razor-tight race to hold onto his Congressional seat against the powerful incumbent Democrat Martin Frost, Stanford's company came to the rescue, giving $37,875 in the final weeks of the race.

Separately, it looks like Team Stanford is staying mum on the charges that it orchestrated an $8 billion fraud. James Davis, Stanford's college roommate and the number two at Stanford Financial, who has also been charged in the SEC complaint, took the Fifth last week under questioning by agency investigators.

And last week, Laura Pendergest-Holt, the company's chief investment officer, was charged with criminally obstructing the SEC probe. The FBI filed court documents claiming Pendergest-Holt made "misrepresentations" about her knowledge of Stanford's investment portfolio, and about whether she met with other Stanford officials to prepare for her testimony. The charge may be evidence that the government is trying to flip Pendergest-Holt to testify about Stanford himself.