Mug Shot Monday – A Twofer – Fraud Against TARP and the SBA

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July 8, 2013

FBILogoBy Bob Coleman
Editor, Coleman Report

A former Georgia bank president and CEO will get 5 ½ years in a fed pen for replacing non-performing bank loans with a SBA loan.

Under the “wow, this is too good to be true rule,” Gary Hall has sadly found out refinancing bad conventional bank debt with a SBA loan, and then having that loan go bad is outright fraud.

Not to defend Mr. Hall, but again it needs to be noted the U.S. Attorney’s stepped up enforcement actions against lenders continues to be in the community bank arena. Wall Street lenders remain outside the arm of the DOJ under the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force established in 2009.

Anyway, says the FBI, “In entering his plea of guilty, Mr. Hall admitted that from 2005 continuing through 2010, he committed bank fraud involving the Tifton Banking Company during his employment as President and CEO of the bank. Mr. Hall admitted that he conspired with others to obtain money, funds, credits, assets, securities, and other property of the Tifton Banking Company while carrying on a practice of replacing non-performing loans with new loans, including a Small Business Administration (SBA) guaranteed loan, to make the bank appear financially stronger than it was. The actions caused monetary losses to the bank and SBA of approximately $2.8 million. Mr. Hall continued these illegal activities even during the time that the bank applied for and received assistance from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a government program established to help financial institutions during a financial crisis in an attempt to save the failing bank.”

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