Stanford Employees in Fort Lauderdale Accused of Shredding Evidence of Massive Fraud

By Thomas Francis Thu., Feb. 4 2010 at 2:36 PM

Categories: Broward, Business, Crime

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Did Allen Stanford's local employees try to cover up his crime?

The first criminal trial in the Stanford Financial Group fraud is under way, and it ain't pretty for the local branch. In opening remarks of a trial that began Monday in Miami, prosecutors told the jury that Thomas Raffanello and Bruce Perraud ordered a massive shredding of Stanford documents one week after the Securities and Exchange Commission filed suit against the Houston-based firm.

The February 16 suit contained an order forbidding the destruction of any documents.

By Feb. 23, Raffanello and Perraud allegedly had made arrangements for a commercial shredding company to destroy documents at the Fort Lauderdale office. A 95-gallon bin full of paper was hauled out to the shredding company's truck two days later, prosecutors said in a revamped four-count indictment filed Dec. 21.

That comes from this Bloomberg article about the case. Defense attorneys for Raffanello and Perraud maintain that the shredding was routine and that the order prohibiting document disposal was flawed.

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