By Dan McCue

CHARLESTON -- Federal Magistrate Judge George C. Kosko released former economist Al Parish on $1 million bond Tuesday and placed him under house arrest in the custody of his brother.

Parish, who is scheduled to be formally released later this afternoon, will have to wear an electronic monitoring device, but will be allowed to travel between the homes of his brother and mother, who live 300 feet apart in adjoining homes.

Parish’s mother pledged her home, which has an assessed value of roughly $260,000 in support of the bond, and Kosko admonished Parish to remember that fact if he entertains any notions about running away.

“If you entertain thoughts of absconding, just remember, your mother will be spending the rest of her days living under the railroad tracks in a cardboard box,” the judge said.

“You won’t have to worry about that,” Parish responded.

Kosko also warned Parish to stay away from airports or port terminals and to refrain from contacting his former investors, as any of those actions will result in his immediate reincarceration.

Parish is accused of bilking more than 600 investors of more than $50 million through six investment pools he ran as a sideline to his day job as an economics professor at Charleston Southern University.

Carlton Bourne, the federal prosecutor handling the case, said today that if convicted, Parish faces a minimum of life in prison under federal sentencing guidelines.

Much of this morning’s hours-long bail hearing centered on the testimony of Susan Hardesty, a forensic psychiatrist at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Hardesty testified that Parish’s amnesia after learning he was about to be charged with investment fraud appears to be genuine and was brought on by acute anxiety.

Hardesty, who examined Parish before his voluntary surrender to authorities on April 12, and has met with him several times since, said the former economist exhibits narcissistic and histrionic tendencies, and that those attributes likely contributed to the degree of his mental collapse.

Among the most eye-opening exchanges during Bourne’s cross examination of Hardesty was her recollection of her first conversation with Parish.

By that time, Parish’s family had reminded him of some of the details of his life, and when asked about them, Hardesty said Parish told her he knew mathematics, science and statistics, but had no knowledge whatsoever of economics.

When told that his former employer, Charleston Southern University, had been among his investors, and had in fact entrusted him with $10 million in university funds, Parish was said to have responded, “It doesn’t make any sense that my employer would allow me to handle its money. I don’t have any knowledge of investing.”