The self-proclaimed ‘Leader’ of COVISAL, Jaime R. Escalona, continues to issue very questionable advice to Latin American Stanford investors.
Not only has he been requesting further ‘donations,’ now a questionnaire to register with Covisal has been issued to Latin American investors. This questionnaire requests extensive private and confidential information from Stanford victims, including; the amount of their investment; the objective of their investment, whether it was a retirement fund, family life savings, education fund, or to guarantee business loans, etc; bank details; credit card details; account statements; and even certain PIN numbers are requested.
I leave you to draw your own conclusions whether all this information is absolutely necessary to join a victim’s support group, and consider carefully what risks investors may face from the trust placed in Covisal if this information is misused, or otherwise falls into the wrong hands.
Furthermore, Covisal continues to advise investors to fill-out their own FTCA claim forms, without acknowledging the risks of such claims being incomplete; being submitted too late; or being otherwise ineligible. Please refer to some of the earlier posts for more detail of the risks involved in ‘self-filing.’ The amount of case-law and precedents that need to be understood is immense, and easy to confuse; you can easily imagine the potential for filing an incomplete or ineligible claim if your first language is not English.
We understand the ‘Leader’ of Covisal has even advised his followers that there is no urgency, to submit FTCA claims, as this is will be a class-action that all investors can join-in later. Anyone spouting such blatant misinformation should not be trusted further.
Should there be litigation, which will most likely become a class-action, ONLY those investors who have registered valid claims will be included. This is an action against the US Government under the FTCA, where the rules for eligibility are very different to other class-actions, and if the reason you give for the negligence of the SEC is significantly different to the rest of the class, your claim may not even be admissible into the class action. In which case you may have to go to court separately and litigate your claim on your own, at your own expense. Furthermore if you do not already have a contract with an attorney, such as the one we have negotiated with Kachroo Legal services for a 15% contingency, you may have to pay whatever the judge awards to the lead attorney, which could be as high as 25% contingency fees. In the past some attorneys have demanded as high as 32% contingency fees from Stanford investors who chose not to pay a retainer. Please be reminded our attorney has already offered to accept clients who are experiencing extreme hardship and can not afford to pay a retainer.
Finally, we understand the ‘Leader’ of Covisal continues to claim our attorney only has only been practicing for 6 years, when she actually has 22 years of experience , some of it highly relevant; has never lost a case; and is the most highly rated for her qualifications and experience. Anyone wishing to compare the rating of our attorney with any of the other Stanford attorneys should refer to the following link and draw their own conclusions:
http://www.avvo.com/attorneys/02142-ma-gaytri-kachroo-1356107.html and her CV can be found here: http://www.kachroolegal.com/docs/dr_kachroo_cv.pdf
Investors in the failed Stanford International Bank, a part of the Stanford Financial Group, in receivership since the arrest of Allen Stanford, who is currently in detention in Houston awaiting trial on 23 counts of fraud, have only a few days left to submit administrative claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act against the US Securities and Exchange Commission; for their negligence in not acting against Allen Stanford sooner, despite knowing for 13 years it was likely he was operating a Ponzi scheme.
The deadline for claims is fast approaching. Unless claims are submitted correctly and timely before the two year Statute of Limitations expires next month on the 16th February 2011, Stanford investors will be denied any recovery from the US government, forever.
The Stanford International Victims Group have engaged an attorney to submit FTCA claims against the SEC. This action against the SEC will not prejudice any SIPC recovery efforts, and is open to all the Stanford investors, irrespective of nationality, place of residence, or the Stanford entity in which they made their investments.
Any Stanford investors, who have not yet decided whether to join this action, should contact their own attorney at their earliest opportunity, or the attorney submitting the FTCA claims on behalf the Stanford International Victims Group: Kachroo Legal Services of Cambridge, Mass. who already have experience of submitting claims on behalf of the Madoff investors.
Email: info@kachroolegal.com
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