In early 2009, the United States was reeling from the subprime mortgage crisis that caused a deep recession felt by exchange markets across the globe. But all was fine in the world of retirees who invested their life savings into the Stanford Trust Company. Fred Demarest, an engineer who moved to Baton Rouge in 1993, was among nearly 1,000 investors who bought certificates of deposit, or CDs, from the Baton Rouge-based arm of the Stanford International Bank. Many of them saw solid returns on investment after they rolled their nest eggs over from the retirement funds of their longtime employers.