MEXIA, Texas — The Texas town of Mexia no longer has even a sign to indicate its connection to R. Allen Stanford, the hometown boy accused of an $8 billion fraud scheme.

The sign for Stanford Group Co., by a one-story building resembling a ranch house, came down after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit against Stanford. His 81-year-old father, James, says he still goes into that office every day to read the newspaper and pay bills.

It isn't Mexia's first brush with fame or notoriety. The town of 10,000 people, 86 miles south of Dallas, also produced model Anna Nicole Smith and National Football League coach Ray Rhodes. Locals say they were more aware of those celebrities than the 58-year-old banker, who ranked 205th on Forbes magazine's September list of the 400 richest Americans.

"I didn't have a clue he was a multibillionaire," said Eddie "Fast Eddie" Chrisner, 64, who grew up within a few blocks of Stanford and remembers him as a polite, neatly dressed kid. "Born-and-bred Mexia boy done good. Between him and Nicole Smith, we're getting on the map again."

Stanford was sued by the SEC Feb. 17 in a case that also named three of his related companies and two associates. The suit accuses them of running a multibillion-dollar fraud involving certificates of deposit issued by Stanford International Bank Ltd. in Antigua.

His father, chairman emeritus of the bank, wasn't named. He testified before the agency Feb. 24 in nearby Waco. The Federal Bureau of Investigation found Stanford near Fredericksburg, Va., on Feb. 19, and served him with court papers related to the SEC suit.

TEXAS UPBRINGING

Stanford left Mexia at age 9, after his parents divorced. He moved around with his mother before settling in Fort Worth, where he attended Eastern Hills High School. He graduated from Baylor University in Waco.

The curly-haired blond boy who would become Sir Allen, the toast of Antigua, came back for summer visits with his father and stepmother. Billie Stanford, who married James Stanford in 1964, says she began to know her stepson the next year, when he was 15.

"He was working all the time," she said. "He always has worked, ever since I've known him."

Stanford lifted bales of hay, did highway construction, delivered juice and worked for a railroad, his father said. The hay-baling job was a way to bulk up before trying out for the football team in the fall, he said.

"He became interested in football and basketball, things a normal, young, red-blooded guy would do," said James Stanford, a former three-time mayor of Mexia, where football and hunting are big. If Stanford had stayed in Mexia and played for the high school's football team, he would have been a Blackcat teammate of Rhodes, now a defensive coach for the Houston Texans and one of the few in the NFL to win five Super Bowl rings.

'CHASING GIRLS'

Stanford was a normal, honest, sweet boy who was fun-loving and a good student, his stepmother says. At 15, he was "chasing girls, I guess," she said.

Chrisner, the neighbor who grew up near the family, remembers the attention Stanford drew from the opposite sex.

"I think all the girls thought he was sort of pretty," Chrisner said as he sipped a late-afternoon coffee at the Drillin' Rig Restaurant.

Bobby Forrest, a 57-year-old owner of real estate and insurance companies in Mexia, says he and Stanford probably played together when they were younger.

Forrest's father competed with Stanford's dad in the Mexia insurance market. By 1983, Forrest's Womack Insurance bought Stanford Insurance Co., absorbed its customers and closed the company, Forrest said in an interview from his newly built office, adorned with Mexia High School football memorabilia and big-game heads.

ROOTS OF COMPANY

Stanford Group, the bank's parent company, traces its roots to 1932, according to marketing materials on its Web site. That's when Lodis B. Stanford, Allen Stanford's grandfather, opened his insurance agency.

Stanford Insurance was founded "in the small central Texas town of Mexia in the midst of the Great Depression. Although it was a time of hardship and adversity, Lodis Stanford forged ahead with a clear vision and dedication that would become the hallmarks of Stanford today," the Web site says.

The site calls Stanford Financial Group, a trademarked name used by the company, "a third-generation family business." Forrest takes exception to the description.

"That did not go from granddad to dad to Allen," Forrest said. "That agency we bought in 1983, all rights to it and everything. Stanford Insurance agency was closed down forever more."

Residents express mixed feelings about the scandal's impact on their town. Some say they're uneasy after their experience when Anna Nicole Smith thrust Mexia into the spotlight.

ADOPTED HOMETOWN

Smith, known to townspeople as Vicki Lynn Hogan, was a former Playboy playmate who married billionaire Texas oilman J. Howard Marshall before dying from a drug overdose in 2007. She wasn't born in Mexia but claimed it as her hometown after spending some time there.

Some townspeople bristle at national news reports describing Mexia as dusty and crumbling, although it does have some buildings and roads in disrepair. James Stanford and Forrest say Mexia is no different from many small towns across the U.S., and is friendly and growing. A family restaurant called The Sportsman and a Buffalo Wild Wings are scheduled to open there soon.

The town's sales-tax revenues more than doubled during the past decade, to about $2.6 million in fiscal 2008.

Mexia started as an oil-gushing boomtown in the 1920s with a population that leaders estimated between 50,000 and 100,000. Oil and natural gas still are drilled, at a slower clip, by oil field-service companies including Schlumberger Ltd. and producers including Devon Energy Corp. and XTO Energy Inc.

THE EMPLOYERS

The town's largest employer is Mexia State School, a home for mentally challenged students that has 1,800 workers. A Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Supercenter, with 387 workers, is among the top five employers.

James Stanford, who served 15 years on Mexia's city council, says the town is suffering, partly because of the publicity about Stanford Group.

"I don't think it does this town any good," he said. "We're just one little spot on the map."