Vijay Singh Stays Unusually Loyal

Allen Stanford is the financier and head of the Stanford Financial Group recently accused of bilking investors of over $7 billion in a ponzi scheme run from Antigua. How anyone did not see this coming is beyond me, but it's proof that the rich are just as stupid as the poor, just with sexier cars to crash when things go wrong. An Antiguan bank offered impossible returns? Give me 100,000 shares! Humphrey, what is that delicious smell? Natural gas? No, don't crack a window--it's delightful, and will go well with the cigar I'm about to smoke!

Stanford is currently in federal custody. His financial empire is unraveling as the SEC looks into his mostly fictional accounts, his life is disintegrating, but he does have one ace in the hole, and a mightily weird one at that: Vijay Singh. Singh, who had an $8 million endorsement contract with Stanford Financial, attempted to pay Stanford's $500,000 bail for him.

"Vijay's opinion is that Stanford has yet to be proven guilty and until then has chose to act supportively," said Dave Haggith, a spokesman at IMG, the management company that represents Singh.

Give Vijay credit: that's some la cosa nostra level loyalty right there. Singh was not allowed to pay the bail as he is not a U.S. citizen, but the signal sent to potential sponsors is an appealing one: if you're a dodgy company possibly on the verge of being raided by the feds, the one golfer most likely to stick by you after you're accused of grandiose fraud is Vijay Singh. And if you're a company looking for a golfer who doesn't have the cash to bail you out of jail, but who might try to slip a file and blowtorch under the table to you at visitation? John Daly is on line one whenever you're ready to talk.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.