My name is Richard A. Cochran. I am a 77-year-old Korean War veteran. I worked in the construction field for 47 years before retiring.
Like the Gulf Coast BP victims, I am a victim, along with many others. We are victims of a financial catastrophe I call turmoil, better known as the Robert Allen Stanford case, which has been going on since February 2009.
Stanford, a Texas financier, has been indicted and faces trial for allegedly defrauding thousands of investors — including numerous people in Baton Rouge, Lafayette and Covington — of $7.2 billion. Stanford has denied wrongdoing.
The federal government agency called the Securities and Exchange Commission has a fiduciary responsibility to protect monies invested in financial institutions regulated by the SEC.
In 1997, SEC personnel reportedly suspected that Allen Stanford was using a Ponzi scheme to bilk the life savings from many unsuspecting people, and the SEC allegedly did nothing to stop him. The SEC Inspector General’s Office is looking into the SEC’s handling of the Stanford investigation.
Our catastrophe, like that of the BP victims, was not of our making. We have lost our life savings because of Allen Stanford and the SEC Enforcement Division’s alleged negligence in doing its job.
In my opinion, we are being treated brutally unfairly by the SEC, which has not authorized partial financial restitution to Stanford investors by the financial industry’s Securities Investor Protection Corp., as the SEC did for people who lost savings to confessed swindler Bernard Madoff.
I am pleading with the good people of the Baton Rouge area to help the Stanford investors become whole again by getting their money back. You may not realize it, but you probably know some of these victims. They are your family, friends, neighbors or co-workers.
Please call or write letters to your U.S. senators and representatives and your president on our behalf, asking that this injustice we are enduring come to an end. If it happened to us, it could happen to you.
Counting on your support,
Richard A. Cochran
operations manager, retired
Baton Rouge
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