Corrupt Investors, Scandal | featured news

R. Allen Stanford, the Texas financier accused of directing a $7 billion Ponzi scheme, complained that his jail cell often lacks light and air conditioning.

For the past week, Stanford, who's in a cell in Conroe, Texas, with from eight to 10 other men, has endured heat and intermittent lack of power when outside temperatures reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) or more, his lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, said yesterday in a motion asking that his client be transferred to a downtown Houston jail.

New York's attorney general issued subpoenas to former GMAC Financial Services Chairman J. Ezra Merkin, three of his funds and 15 nonprofits in his probe of alleged frauds on charities in the Bernard Madoff scandal.

Besieged money manager Bernard Madoff avoided prison again Wednesday, when a judge ruled that he can remain on bail while  the government investigates the case.

Young, handsome, confident, smooth talking. That's how some commercial pilots described financial planner Marcus Schrenker, the runaway pilot who authorities say bilked investors out of millions and tried to fake his death in a plane crash. "You could trust this guy. He was a pilot, and he understood us," one said.

Marcus Schrenker, the financial manager who officials say faked his own death in a plane crash after scamming his customers, has been found after an apparent suicide attempt, Florida and federal authorities said Tuesday.