R Allen Stanford has been sentenced to 110 years' jail for a Ponzi scheme fraud

Former Texas billionaire R Allen Stanford has been sentenced to 110 years in prison for orchestrating one of the largest Ponzi schemes in US history.

The sentence was handed down by a US District Judge in Houston.

Stanford was convicted by a jury in March on 13 of 14 fraud-related counts for taking more than 7 billion US dollars (£4.5 billion) from investors.

The jury also cleared the way for US authorities to seize millions in bank accounts connected to the 62-year-old.

Prosecutors said Stanford orchestrated a 20-year scheme that took billions through the sale of certificates of deposit from his Caribbean bank.

Stanford's lawyers argued that he was a legitimate businessman.

In February 2009, England's cricketing chiefs severed all links with Stanford, a day after FBI agents tracked him down.

English cricketers had been due to play a number of potentially lucrative matches following the format of a million-dollar-a-man, winner-takes-all Twenty20 contest between England and a team of Stanford Superstars in his adopted home of Antigua the previous year.

Under a deal struck in 2008 between Stanford and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), England had been due to play four further 20 million dollar (£13 million) matches in the Caribbean. There were also plans for a series of Quadrangular Twenty20 events, with the first taking place at Lord's in May 2009.

But the allegations levied against Stanford forced the ECB into a rethink, and it announced that all contractual links had been terminated.