The men's professional tennis tour had been using the Stanford Financial Group as an investment advisor and now is examining its sponsorship deal with the company whose chairman was accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of perpetrating an $8 billion investment fraud.

``The ATP can confirm that it has terminated with immediate effect the Stanford Group's role as its investment advisor and is reviewing its sponsorship agreement with the Group,'' tour spokesman Kris Dent wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press on Thursday.

The tour uses multiple investment firms and no player pension funds were invested with Stanford Financial.

Dent would not say how much money the tour received from Stanford Financial under a sponsorship deal that began in 2005. The group was promoted as the tour's ``official financial advisor.''

In addition, in 2006, Stanford Financial Group entered into a three-year commitment to be the official title sponsor for the ATP Doubles Team Race and ATP Doubles Rankings.

In a civil complaint Tuesday, the SEC accused Texas financier R. Allen Stanford, two other executives and three of his companies with luring investors with promises of improbable and unsubstantiated high returns on certificates of deposit and other investments. It's not clear how much of the $8 billion was lost and how much investors might recover.

Stanford was tracked down Thursday in Virginia, where FBI agents served him legal papers.

While not a title sponsor for any individual tennis tournaments on the ATP tour or the women's WTA tour, Stanford Financial Group has put up money for lower-level sponsorship for some events. That includes the Sony Ericsson Open, a joint men's and women's event in Key Biscayne, Fla., that begins March 25.

``I am not aware of any impact at this time of the latest news'' on the group's sponsorship of the Sony Ericsson Open, WTA spokesman Andrew Walker said.

The group was not a WTA tour sponsor, Walker said.