In news that can't be considered surprising, the US Department of Justice on Friday (19 June) unsealed a massive criminal indictment charging the billionaire financier Allen Stanford and five other people with orchestrating a $7bn (£4.2bn) Ponzi scheme through Stanford's banking empire in Antigua and in the US.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a civil case against Stanford and several Stanford International Bank executives in February, so Friday's indictment had long been expected. The new indictment, centres on the now-familiar scheme involving the bank's certificates of deposit, which offered investors huge, double-digit rates of return. The indictment charges Stanford and three other company officials – including Laura Pendergest-Holt, the bank's chief investment officer – with falsely pumping up the value of the bank's investments in presentations and meetings with investors. In reality, the indictment says, about 80% of the bank's investments were in illiquid assets, including more than $1bn (£600m) in loans to Stanford, according to press reports.

Let's break down the lawyers. For Stanford, well-known Texas criminal defence lawyer Dick DeGuerin has been on the case for months. Also, Patton Boggs partner Christina Sarchio has now been retained for both the SEC case and the new criminal case, according to court records. Pendergest-Holt, who before today has been the only person facing criminal charges in the case, has retained a team consisting of Jeffrey Tillotson of Lynn Tillotson Pinker & Cox, Brent Baker of Parsons Behle & Latimer, and Houston-based criminal defence lawyer Dan Cogdell.

The complaint names three other Stanford employees and one Antiguan official, Leroy King. King allegedly accepted bribes from Stanford in exchange for tipping him off to US investigations and conducted sham audits showing positive results for Stanford's bank. Lawyers for those defendants could not be immediately reached.

Let's not forget Thomas Sjoblom, the Proskauer Rose partner who represented Pendergest-Holt when she first testified before the SEC in February. The SEC soon after charged her with lying to investigators, raising questions about whether Sjoblom should have been representing her and Stanford's bank at the same time. The experts were unanimous in saying that Pendergest-Holt should have had her own lawyer; SEC records show Sjoblom emphasised several times during testimony that he was not her personal attorney.

The indictment is likely to increase the focus on Sjoblom, whom Pendergest-Holt has since sued for malpractice.

The indictment does not name Sjoblom, but it mentions only one attorney for the bank, "a lawyer for Stanford International Bank." Sources involved in the case have confirmed the lawyer is Sjoblom, and the description of the lawyer's activities matches descriptions of Sjoblom's that are already in the public record of litigation related to the Stanford case.

According to the indictment, Sjoblom met with SEC lawyers at a restaurant in Houston on 22 January and discussed the case, assuring them that Stanford's bank was "not a criminal enterprise" and that "the assets are all there." A day later, he successfully persuaded SEC attorneys to subpoena Pendergest-Holt and the bank's president for testimony instead of Stanford and his number two man, James Davis, the indictment says. Sjoblom claimed that Stanford and Davis were removed from the bank's day-to-day activities, and that Pendergest-Holt knew the "nuts and bolts" of the business better.

On 24 January, a day later, Sjoblom wrote an email to a bank employee discussing his success in staving off any deposition of Stanford and Davis. In that email, he wrote that Pendergest-Holt would have to prepare hard for her deposition, and in particular that she would have to "get up to speed" on one type of asset the bank held. He sent an email to Pendergest-Holt and others three days later re-emphasising that point. Pendergest-Holt would have "to rise to the occasion," Sjoblom wrote, because "our livelihood depends on it."

Pendergest-Holt allegedly lied to the SEC during that testimony in early February. The next day, Sjoblom withdrew from the case and officially disaffirmed anything he had told the SEC about the company during the investigation. The move won praise from experts who initially said Sjoblom had acted appropriately.

In any case, Tillotson says Pendergest-Holt is "anxious to get going" in defending herself now that the full indictments are finally out.

Stanford, who surrendered on Friday in Virginia, was ordered held in custody over the weekend until a hearing can be held on his detention next week. Davis has not been charged, though the Department of Justice released what is known as a "criminal information" against him. Davis is co-operating with investigators and is expected to plead guilty.

This article first appeared on The Am Law Daily, Legak Week's US sister title.