Covering Their Tracks: Firm Linked To Ponzi Scheme Erases Tagg Romney From Website #p2 #tcot

from http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/11/02/359135/romney-ponzi-covering-their-tracks/

Yesterday, ThinkProgress released our investigation of the Romney family's investment firms, including Solamere Advisors and its parent company, Solamere Capital, which is run by Mitt Romney's son Tagg. The report found that Tagg founded his firm using $10 million of Mitt's money, and later partnered with a group of brokers who allegedly helped perpetrate one of the largest Ponzi schemes in modern history, the $8.5 billion Stanford Financial Group.

After our report, the Romney campaign released a statement to ABC News and the National Journal simply attacking ThinkProgress as a "a left-wing blog with a highly partisan agenda." Despite calling our story "false material," the Romney spokesperson did not directly dispute any of our assertions. The Romney campaign has not explained why, for instance, Tagg Romney falsely claimed that his Solamere Advisors partners were "cleared" of wrongdoing in connection to the Stanford Financial Group Ponzi scheme.

Now, it appears that one of the firms is trying to cover up its tracks. Sometime last night, Solamere Advisors, the firm run by brokers who allegedly took part in the Stanford Ponzi Scheme, deleted the section of their website that lists Tagg Romney and Spencer Zwick, the Romney for President lead fundraiser. View a screen shot of the current web address, which shows a "404 File or directory not found" error message:

Fortunately, ThinkProgress captured screen shots of the Romney family investment firm websites before we published our story. View a screen shot of the Solamere Advisors directors page before the deletion (click to enlarge the website image):

Solamere Advisors directors, including Tagg Romney, Spencer Zwick, and several brokers who allegedly perpetrated the Stanford Ponzi scheme

In an interview last month, Tagg Romney told ThinkProgress that his partners were "cleared" from the Stanford Ponzi scheme lawsuit to retrieve what prosecutors believe are the fraudulent gains made by his partners, Tim Bambauer, Deems May, and Brandon Phillips. He also suggested that his former Stanford employee partners were the true victims since they had been promised bonuses that they had never received. In fact, in court documents obtained by ThinkProgress, none of the men have been cleared, and a court-appointed audit found that they made about $1.6 million in participating in the Stanford Ponzi scheme.