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Judge Declines To Delay Texas Billionaire's Trial

HOUSTON (AP) - A federal judge has declined a last-ditch attempt by attorneys for jailed Texas financier R. Allen Stanford to postpone his trial set to begin next week.

U.S. District Judge David Hittner rejected efforts to delay the trial in a hearing Wednesday. He had previously denied several other attempts within the last month to postpone the trial.

Jury selection is to begin Monday.

Stanford is accused of bilking investors out of $7 billion in a massive Ponzi scheme.

Last year, he spent more than eight months under treatment in a North Carolina federal prison hospital after he was declared incompetent due to an anti-anxiety drug addiction developed while jailed in Houston.

Last month, Hittner ruled Stanford was competent to stand trial.

(© Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

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