Leading article: bedazzled | A sorry tale of greed and shame | Profile: Stanford made England cringe | Hunt for Stanford and his billions | 'Fraud' uncovered by favour | Irresistible returns | Rush to withdraw money | Caught out after Madoff | SEC charge in full

He was a man with a seemingly big heart and an even bigger wallet. No wonder Giles Clarke, chairman of the ECB, and David Collier, the chief executive of the board, were persuaded by Allen Stanford as he dangled his millions in front of English cricket.

They were not the only ones in the highest echelons of sport who could not resist the lure of Stanford’s apparently platinum-rated credit. Suggestions that creditors could sue the ECB and other recipients of his millions to recoup any losses look unlikely, but the Texan has left his fingerprints on sport, where the embarrassment of executives and athletes is matched by their bewilderment.

Among those thought to have been hardest hit are five members of the Stanford Superstars team — Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Dave Mohammed, Kieron Pollard and Sylvester Joseph — who won $1 million (now about £700,000) a man for beating England in November and who are thought to have reinvested the money with Stanford. Neither, it is believed, has the West Indies Cricket Board been paid the £3.5 million due from the $20 million prize fund.

Stanford affair leaves sportsmen at sea

Suspicions that money could be tainted will be haunting agents and sports executives, as well as the Texan's customers

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Stanford: a sorry tale of greed and shame

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• Fallout from Allen Stanford affair leaves top sportsmen confused

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• ECB leadership has much to answer for

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Michael Owen, the Newcastle United and England striker, was left wondering last night whether he was about to lose tens of thousands of pounds in the Stanford crash, while Vijay Singh, the world’s No 4 golfer, might now be without a generous sponsor who was paying him up to an estimated $5 million a year.

Stanford also backs Camilo Villegas, the rising Colombian golfer, and Morgan Pressel, the youngest player to qualify for the women’s US Open golf tournament at 12, while Stanford was a mover behind the AT&T National PGA Tour event that was in aid of the Tiger Woods Foundation.

The Stanford Financial Tour Championship women’s event for the LPGA is still scheduled for November with a $2 million purse, while the PGA Tour insisted that the Stanford St Jude Championship, which will feature some of the biggest names in golf, will go ahead in June, in the run-up to the US Open.

In tennis, the Sony Ericsson Open next month in Miami, Florida — where Stanford is a host sponsor — is unaffected, while the Stanford name still adorns the arenas that host the Houston Rockets and Miami Heat basketball teams.

However, executives across a range of Stanford sponsor deals are already consulting lawyers to discover for how long the money will keep coming after the US Securities and Exchange Commission moved to freeze the assets of Stanford’s companies.

Suspicions that the Stanford money could be tainted will be haunting agents and sports executives, his customers and contacts, for months to come. Unlike other sponsors, so many of Stanford’s contracts rested on the quality of his name and character, something called into question more than once even before the welter of fraud allegations. “The difficulty when you rely on one individual’s personality is that there is no fallback,” Steve Silk, a director at 63G, the sponsor and branding expert, said.

Owen signed as an ambassador for Stanford last year and the England star’s generous assessment of his new sponsor appears to have included trusting the alleged fraudster with some, if not all, of his fee, thought to be about £600,000, in return for personal appearances and endorsements. “What they do is appealing and I’ve invested with them,” he said.

Singh, sporting the Stanford eagle logo on his shirt that he is contracted to wear for five years as he prepared to play in the Northern Trust Open in California, confessed to being “surprised” by the news. IMG, the Fijian’s agency, refused to comment yesterday, but he is likely to be the first to investigate any clause that allows him to break his contract.

Stanford also sponsored polo across the US and last year his name moved to the heart of the British Establishment when the annual charity polo day at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, hosted by Prince Charles, became the Stanford Charity Polo Day.