The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Texas financier R. Allen Stanford with an $8 billion fraud, alleging in a civil complaint that he lured investors with promises of high returns on certificates of deposit but poured their money into a “black box” of hard-to-trade assets.

The second huge alleged fraud to emerge in three months — following Ponzi-scheme charges against Bernard L. Madoff — reverberated around the world, given Mr. Stanford’s status as an international cricket sponsor, Washington political donor and private banker to Latin America’s wealthy. Federal agents searched the Houston buildings that are home to his Stanford Financial Group, and customers lined up to withdraw money from a bank he owns in Antigua, the Caribbean island nation where Mr. Stanford’s offshore banking operations are based.

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