HOUSTON, (Reuters) – For clients, doing business with Allen Stanford got you a personalized parking spot and a 5-star meal. For top-performing employees, it was a ticket to meet Sir Allen himself and see the world through a champagne glass.
Few have ever gained access to the plush Stanford Group offices in Houston’s upscale Galleria area, the U.S. headquarters where the Texas billionaire carried out what the Securities and Exchange Commission called a “massive ongoing fraud” through the sale of $8 billion in high yield certificates of deposit.
But Mark Tidwell, 40, a former senior vice president at Stanford, who has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the company, recalls a plush dining room with a new menu every day, and perks aplenty for employees fortunate enough to make the “Top Producers Club.”
“You know it’s different when you pull in because there is a security guard that greets every car that pulls into the parking garage,” Tidwell told Reuters in an interview at a Houston law office.
Potential clients arriving at Stanford’s Houston office found a parking space with their name on it and were met at the door. Once inside the confines of the building, bedecked outside with palm trees and tropical flowers, there were dark granite floors and a sea of mahogany walls.
As they were ushered to the auditorium to watch a 10-minute video about the history of the company — which traces its roots back to the Great Depression — clients might have walked by Stanford’s personal office, also on the first floor.
However, Tidwell despite being a senior executive never got invited into Allen Stanford’s inner sanctum.
“No one really gets to go in there but it’s about half of the first floor,” Tidwell said.
But not to worry. After watching the video, potential clients were led to the a private dining room called the Eagle Room, which featured a different menu every day, white linen tablecloths and award-winning chefs.
“There is a lot of direct attention being given to folks,” Tidwell said.
U.S. law enforcement officials found Stanford in the Fredericksburg, Virginia, area on Thursday, and served the jet-setting 58-year-old tycoon with a complaint accusing him of the fraud. He was knighted by Antigua and Barbuda in 2006 to become Sir Allen Stanford.
Stanford’s financial empire is now in the hands of a judge-appointed receiver, after federal agents raided Stanford Group offices in Houston, Miami and other U.S. cities earlier this week.
Allen Stanford himself interacted with employees occasionally but “it is brief, it is limited,” said Charles Rawl, who is also a part of the whistleblower lawsuit along with Tidwell. “He didn’t want to have much to do with us,” said Rawl, who was a financial adviser with Stanford Group Co.
In the lawsuit, the two say they were forced to resign to avoid participating in illegal business practices.
Tidwell, who sold investments for the Antiguan-based Stanford International Bank, said he had more interactions with Stanford because the banking arm of the businesses was “his baby.”
Stanford personally attended most meetings of the “Top Producers Club,” which convened in cities across the world to toast the company’s top sellers, Tidwell said.
In their elegance, the meetings, which occurred in cities like Geneva, New York, Houston and the Mexican resort town of Puerto Vallarta, were “borderline on Disneyworld,” Tidwell said. He said he eventually stopped attending the meetings because they had low business value.
“It was really an opportunity to brag and talk about how everybody did for that particular quarter,” Tidwell said.
