Fraud Friday – Former Iowa Bank President Faces 16 Counts of Fraud

Release Date: Unknown

By: Dominic J Bartolone
Contributing editor, Fraud Friday – Former Iowa Bank President Faces 16 Counts of Fraud

Former Iowa bank executive, Christopher Goerdt, faces 16 federal charges — including bank fraud, identity theft, and wire fraud — after allegedly using a bank credit card for unauthorized purchases and diverting funds from customers’ loans for personal use.

Christopher Goerdt was president of Peoples Trust and Savings Bank and served as an agent with the Farm Bureau until 2015. In 2016, Goerdt was appointed vice president of County Bank where he specialized in agricultural and commercial lending.

While Christopher Goerdt was president of Peoples Trust and Savings Bank, he used a credit card under the bank’s name to charge nearly $90,000 in personal and unauthorized business expenses. He then used customers’ loan payments to pay off the credit card and occasionally siphoned additional funds from customer accounts for personal use.

In October 2014 and again in February 2015, Goerdt took out lines of credit in his customers’ names and made unauthorized advances on their lines of credit for his own benefit. He is now being charged with two counts of unlawful use of another person’s identity information.

While serving as vice president of Country Bank, Goerdt allegedly took more than $2,218 from a customer’s account to the pay another person’s property taxes. He is now facing embezzlement charges under a single count of misapplication by a bank officer.

Although Goerdt’s personal profiles claim that he has “significant expertise in compliance and information technology related to the bank industry,” Goerdt is now facing 16 counts of fraud and his name no longer appears on County Bank’s website.