By: Laurence Viele Davidson and Laurel Brubaker Calkins
One month before he was accused of helping R. Allen Stanford run an $8 billion Ponzi scheme, James Davis sent a text-message to a friend: “I’m praying for you.”
Now members of the church Davis founded are praying for him. The Stanford Group Co. chief financial officer shouldn’t be judged until all the facts are revealed, said Paul Stupka, the youth pastor at LifeWay Community Church when it held its first service in Davis’s home outside Baldwyn, Mississippi, in 1999.
“People are surprised and saddened” by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claims, Stupka said. He received the text-message from Davis in mid-January and hasn’t heard from him since, he said.
Davis, 60, met with federal prosecutors and representatives of the SEC and the Federal Bureau of Investigation yesterday at the regulator’s office in Fort Worth, Texas. The CFO abandoned a plan to invoke his Constitutional right against self- incrimination and is “fully and actively cooperating,” his lawyer, David Finn of Dallas, said in a telephone interview.
Church-Building CFO Battles U.S. Fraud Suit While Praying
