Did I Mention That Crook Almost Hired Me?

Can anyone politely ask Bowman Brown to shush up already over his now legendary near-miss almost representation of R. Allen Stanford:

“He came to town referred by a prominent Texas law firm in the late ’80s, early ’90s,” said Bowman Brown, an international banking attorney with Shutts & Bowen. “He was referred to me initially and I met with him.”

Stanford wanted to set up an offshore operation with an on-shore presence to sell into Latin America.

“He had just been thrown out of Montserrat — he didn’t tell me that — but researching that I see that he has and he wanted to set up in Antigua, which received sort of the refuse from Montserrat, which was a pirate banking community until Britain closed it down,” Brown recalled. “He had a bank chartered there and when Britain closed it down, they closed him down.”

Then Antigua opened up.

“What he wanted to do was just not workable in my view, it was not anything I wanted to be near,” Brown said. “I told him that I couldn’t help him, so he went across the street and found somebody who could and set up in Miami.”

Well, come on now, tell us!

What nudnick lawyer "across the street" was desperate enough to be retained by this patently obvious two-bit huckster?

But Bowman's once-sealed lips are now sealed again....sort of:

“I saw him [Stanford] in the elevator maybe nine months ago and as he got off the elevator,” Brown said, “he said, ‘Hey, remember me?’ I said, ‘Yeah, sure I do. How are doing?’ He said, ‘Now we have $50 billion under management,’ sort of saying, ‘You dummy, look at all the fees you passed on.’ I thought to myself, ‘I’m sure I’ll see you in handcuffs some day.’ I’m so glad I didn’t get near that guy.”

Brown and other international banking attorneys are getting deluged by Stanford clients fearing the worst and hoping that somehow their money can be recovered.

“We’re working with maybe 40 or 50 clients at this point, and we’re just at the beginning,” Brown said. “I mean, I’m getting a call every 15 minutes, or people lining up at the door. This at a minimum will probably involve the $8 billion that supposedly was booked in the bank, but it will also involve all of the stuff that was booked in the broker dealer and whatever else he says, if half of it is to be believed — he has under advisement, which is $50 billion. Conceivably it could be in the range of the Madoff thing.”

Well, I guess there's nothing wrong with a little press to drum up some business, especially in this economy, and Bowman's a quality lawyer of course.

I particularly love any war story that burnishes your own reputation at the expense of the reputation of someone else. Like Gore Vidal says, it's not enough to win -- others must fail.