Fraud Friday – 30 Months for Colorado Community Banker
May 2, 2013
By Bob Coleman
Editor, Coleman Report
Fraud Friday – 30 Months for Colorado Community Banker
“Those responsible for bank failures were also ultimately responsible for the weakening of our economy,” said U.S. Attorney John Walsh. “Thanks to the hard work of the Assistant U.S. Attorneys, the FBI, IRS-Criminal Investigation, and the FDIC, the officer of one of these failed banks has been held personally accountable, is now a felon, and will spend time in federal prison.”
What did Gregory Bell do other than be an executive of the Greely, Colorado failed community bank that cost the FDIC $870 million and left the ranchers and Main Street starved for credit?
As a community banker, he didn’t fall in the “Too Big to Jail” category. And, he’s no choir boy.
1) He persuaded eight prominent borrowers to get $4 million in loans from the bank in order to purchase bank stock. He failed to disclose the “use of proceeds” on the credit memorandum, hiding the transaction from the regulators that were demanding the shoring up of capital reserves.
2) Mr. Bell deposited a $160,000 check into his account at the bank. “The transaction involved the proceeds of a specified unlawful activity, knowing that the transaction was designed in whole or in part to conceal and disguise the source and the ownership of the proceeds of the unlawful activity,” says the FBI.
3) Our perp benefitted “personally” from a $5.5 million loan that he underwrote.
Add restitution and three years probation to the sentence.