Spencer Barasch

Ex-SEC Official's Pitch To Prospective Client: I Promoted The Guys Who Filed Complaint Against You

Justin Elliott | April 26, 2010, 2:22PM

Spencer Barasch

"I am friends with and helped promote two of the guys who signed the Complaint against Mark. Someone should tell Mark to look at my profile on my firm website, my SEC press releases, and advise Mark to add me to his defense team."

Those are the words of former SEC Fort Worth enforcement chief Spencer Barasch, in a 2008 email pitching his services to a person close to Mark Cuban, the billionaire Texas businessman then facing an SEC insider trading complaint, the Dallas Morning News reports.

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Spencer Barasch

SEC Enforcement Lawyer Who Quashed Stanford Probes Later Did Legal Work For Stanford

Justin Elliott | April 19, 2010, 2:01PM

Spencer Barasch (inset) and Allen Stanford (center)

The new inspector general report on the SEC's handling of the Allen Stanford alleged Ponzi scheme case paints a devastating picture of the agency's repeated failures to pursue the billionaire banker, despite a widespread belief within the SEC's Fort Worth office that he was a fraud.

At the center of the story is Spencer Barasch, the chief of enforcement at the SEC's Fort Worth office, who declined to pursue Stanford multiple times, only to later jump ship to become a partner at a big private law firm where he proceeded to represent none other than 'Sir' Allen Stanford.

The inspector general has referred Barasch to the bars of Washington and Texas, where he is licensed, for potential violation of conflict of interest rules.

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