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Laura Pendergest-Holt will remain free on bond after being indicted this week in Houston on two charges of blocking a Securities and Exchange Commission probe of the Stanford Financial Group. Also in court Thursday, a trial date was set for July 20.
Pendergest-Holt, the first person indicted in the federal investigation of the troubled firm, was arrested and charged in February and was freed on a $300,000 bond. If convicted, she could be sentenced up to five years in prison for each count.
Federal investigators accuse Stanford and his finance chief, James M. Davis, of conducting a "massive Ponzi scheme."
During her brief arraignment, Pendergest-Holt said very little. She will remain free on the $300,000 bond that had been issued after she was arrested and charged in February.
Her attorneys, Dan Cogdell and Chris Flood, asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Milloy if she could stop being electronically monitored — one of the conditions of her bond. Pendergest-Holt is living in Baldwyn, Miss., but her attorneys said she planned to move to North Carolina, where her husband would start a new job. Prosecutor Gregg Costa asked that the electronic monitoring remain.
Milloy did not rule on that issue, and asked attorneys to submit motions on it.