Loyal reader Martin has pointed out a story which he correctly says is so wrong that no one could possibly find for the complainants.
A group of investors who were bilked by the Stanford Financial Group’s ponzi scheme is suing the St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital to recover $7.5 million that Stanford donated to the institution. The same investors and their court-appointed receiver are also suing the PGA Tour for the $12.9 million that Stanford paid in 2007 and 2008 to sponsor a golf tournament to benefit the St. Jude Children’s Hospital. Further, the investors’ suit reserves the right to adjust the amount in the event that Stanford had donated money they don’t currently know about.
I find this absolutely unbelievable. I’m sorry that the investors didn’t do due diligence and, blinded by greed, invested in a financial firm which for a short while produced suspiciously outsized investment returns. But the act of suing the St. Jude Children’s Hospital proves that they are not only stupid enough to invest in such a firm, but also lacking anything resembling a soul. St. Jude’s is a world renowned institution which treats children with cancer at no cost to the families. It costs $1.6 million a day to do this. There’s no doubt in my mind that the $7.5 million has already been spent to save a child’s life.
Further, if a group of investors failed to see the Stanford fraud, then I don’t see how St. Jude’s could know any better. St. Jude’s accepted the money thinking the same thing the investors did: that Stanford was legit.
The investors group and receiver are claiming that the PGA received the money from Stanford without providing any services or anything of equivalent value. I suppose they think the same thing about St. Jude’s. But they’re wrong. The money bought good will and did a good deed, and in the end, that’s the only thing about Stanford worth remembering.
Discover more from GolfBlogger Golf Blog
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
While this is going to get tossed, it won’t happen before money and resources have to be redirected to that task. A lot of folks, doctors and others, here give their time to St. Jude – and so it is possible that there will be lawyers that work on this dismissal without any cost to the hospital. The Stanford victims also have targeted Le Bonheur Childrens Hospital for $2.5 million.
Appearantly with the Madoff scheme, the courts have allowed a “claw-back” rule which allows aggressively going back after just about anyone who received money, but there either they did not try or were not successful against charities.