Celebrated Texas attorney Dick DeGuerin to defend Stanford

Dick DeGuerin is on the case.

The same day the legendary defense lawyer signed on to represent Texas financier R. Allen Stanford against charges he ran an $8-billion Ponzi scheme, DeGuerin was already calling media organizations to give them a sneak peek of the defense.

“The SEC is using Stanford as a distraction from its failures in Madoff,” DeGuerin told Business Week, referring to Bernard Madoff’s decades-long Ponzi scheme to defraud investors. “This is not Madoff. … This is not a Ponzi scheme.”

The Stetson-wearing DeGuerin does not shrink from big challenges, representing among other clients, cult leader David Koresh, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and several former Enron bankers.

In 2003, he shocked the legal world when he convinced a Texas jury to acquit Robert Durst, the cross-dressing son of a NY real estate mogul, of murder charges in a gruesome dismembering case.

Born in Austin, DeGuerin graduated from the University of Texas Law School in 1965 and began his career with the district attorney’s office in Houston. He got his big break when he was offered a job by celebrated Texas attorney Percy Foreman, who defended Jack Ruby, the man who shot President Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.

In 1982, DeGuerin struck out on his own, and his reputation grew.

He represented Koresh before he died with about 80 followers in a fire that erupted during a federal siege of their Waco compound in 1993. Hired by Koresh’s mother, DeGuerin went inside the compound during the 51-day standoff that preceded the blaze and took part in negotiations between Koresh and the FBI. He blames the government for the fiery ending.

DeGuerin, who teaches at the University of Texas Law School, is a pilot who loves to fly to far West Texas. He also likes to go on trail rides with friends and is proud to show off his callused fingertips from his years of guitar playing. He is married, with two daughters from a previous marriage, two stepdaughters and two grandsons.

In his interviews on the Stanford case, DeGuerin expresses no doubt his client will be exonerated.

“There were hard assets behind every dollar invested in his bank,” he told Bloomberg News. “Sure, the stock market crash hit him, but it didn’t hit him any harder than anybody else. His returns were in line with what the stock market indexes lost.”

DeGuerin contends, moreover, that U.S. regulators caused investors to panic, creating a fatal run on Stanford’s banking empire.

Right now, Stanford faces only civil fraud charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Feb. 17 civil complaint alleges he took at least $1.6 billion in personal loans from his offshore bank and deceived investors about the assets the bank was investing its money in.

But the Justice Department is on the case, and has already filed obstruction of justice charges against Laura Pendergest-Holt, the former chief investment officer at Stanford Financial Group. And the latest news that Stanford’s no. 2, James M. Davis is now cooperating with prosecutors also seems ominous.

DeGuerin, however, betrays no anxiety. “If he tells the truth it doesn’t concern us,” he said.

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• Stanford Financial Group’s No. 2 is cooperating with feds - March 24, 2009
• R. Allen Stanford charged with fraud and obstruction - June 19, 2009
• Stanford accused in a scam ‘of shocking magnitude’ - February 18, 2009
• Feds turn up heat on Stanford exec Laura Pendergest-Holt - February 27, 2009
• Biden’s son, brother had business ties to Stanford empire - February 25, 2009
• Muck tracker - Stanford pleads not guilty - June 25, 2009
• Muck tracker- Alan Stanford pleads the fifth - March 11, 2009
• Madoff agrees to partial settlement of civil case - February 9, 2009
• Stanford’s ties to Madoff helped sink him - February 22, 2009
• One Ponzi schemer eclipses another - December 24, 2008