Allen Stanford, the flamboyant financier and cricket impresario, faced a judge in America last night accused of running a $7 billion (£4.2 billion) pyramid scheme.

The moustachioed Texan, who landed a helicopter at Lord’s and was hailed as a potential saviour of English cricket, could face up to a 375-year jail sentence if convicted of fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice.

At the hearing in Richmond, Virginia, Judge Hannah Lauck ordered Mr Stanford to be kept in custody but moved immediately to Houston, Texas, for a detention hearing, where bail terms are to be discussed.

He was detained in Richmond on Thursday night and appeared in court stone-faced and hobbled by leg-irons. He briefly grasped the hand of Andrea Stoelker, his fiancé, who sat behind him. As the case was presented, he listened intently, answering only three questions with a brief “Yes Ma’am”.

The Houston hearing is expected to take place early next week.

Also indicted yesterday were five Stanford Financial Group executives and an allegedly corrupt bank regulator on the Caribbean island of Antigua, which Mr Stanford turned into a virtual fiefdom.

Prosecutors said that Mr Stanford and his associates tricked between 5,000 and 6,000 investors into buying $7 billion of supposedly safe Certificates of Deposit from the Antigua-based Stanford International Bank, with returns too good to be true.

Mr Stanford and his alleged coconspirators allegedly misappropriated most of that money, including $1.6 billion in personal loans to Mr Stanford, prosecutors said.

So far investigators have frozen about $300 million in bank accounts in Britain, Switzerland and Canada, but have not been able to trace the other missing funds.

The criminal indictment said that Mr Stanford made “regular secret corrupt payments of thousands of dollars in cash” to Leroy King, the former head of Antigua’s Financial Services Regulatory Commission, to ensure that he did not audit the bank’s finances, and filed false reports to US authorities. The pay-offs totalled “hundreds of thousands of dollars”.

“Economic crimes such as those alleged here today are unfortunately all too commonplace,” said Kevin Perkins, assistant director of the FBI. “These crimes strike at the heart of our economy and our quality of life.”

Mr Stanford, 59, turned himself in to FBI agents after a grand jury in Houston handed down the 57-page indictment four months after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused him of running a “massive Ponzi scheme”. He was taken into custody outside the home of Miss Stoelker, a former cocktail waitress. Dick DeGuerin, Mr Stanford’s lawyer, said that he “surrendered to FBI agents who were hiding in black SUVs outside the residence”. He added in a written statement that his client was “confident that a fair jury will find him not guilty”.

The case is the first major financial prosecution brought by the Obama Administration, which has pledged to crack down on financial fraud.

Mr Stanford was ranked by Forbes magazine last year as the 605th richest person in the world with an estimated fortune of more than $2 billion.

The fifth-generation Texan from the small town of Mexia affects aristocratic airs, taking advantage of a 2006 knighthood by the Caribbean island of Antigua to call himself Sir.

Though raised on baseball, he pioneered Twenty20 cricket, helped to fund the Antigua Sail Week regatta, struck endorsement deals with the Fijian golfer Vijay Singh and the England footballer Michael Owen, and sponsored a Sandhurst Cup polo tournament attended by the Prince of Wales. He claimed to be related to the founder of Stanford University until it filed a trademark infringement suit.

Mr Stanford came to dominate Antigua under the four-decade rule of Vere Bird, the island’s first Prime Minister, and his son, Lester Bird. The SEC said that he used the island as his “personal playground”.

The now-bankrupt Stanford International Bank has its headquarters in a Neo-Classical office park at the island’s airport, where Mr Stanford also owned the country’s major newspaper, the Antigua Sun, two restaurants, a spa and a cricket ground. In recent years he has lived in St Croix in the US Virgin Islands but also owns a 57-acre moated mansion in Florida.

In Britain, Mr Stanford is best known for revolutionising cricket by organising a million-dollar-a-man Twenty20 match last year between England and a West Indian team called the “Stanford Superstars” — a contest he promoted with his helicopter stunt at Lord’s.

Before he became mired in fraud allegations he had been expected to become a backer of a proposed English Premier League Twenty20 tournament. After being hit by civil charges in February, Mr Stanford protested his innocence. In a tearful interview, he told ABC News: “I would die and go to Hell if it’s a Ponzi scheme.”

Also indicted were Laura Predergest-Holt, 35, the group’s chief investment officer, who was already facing obstruction charges; James Davis, the chief financial officer; Gilberto Lopez, 66, the chief accounting officer and Mark Kuhrt, 37, the firm’s global controller. Bruce Perraud, who worked in the Fort Lauderdale office, was charged with destroying documents.

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