Mugshot Monday — Seven Years for Fantasy Rock Star
October 28, 2013
By Bob Coleman
Editor, Coleman Report
Pleading guilty to five counts of bank fraud, a wannabe rocker gets seven years in prison for ripping off over $6 million from Comerica Bank alone.
He received over $11 million from four banks showing assets of $8 million in a Charles Schwab account. Personal tax returns and a personal financial statement were also used by Comerica to justify a 75% advance against the rock star’s collateral.
Problem is it was all phony, and he barely had $10,000 to his name.
But party like a rock star on the bank’s dime he did.
He lived in a 35-story luxury high-rise in downtown Los Angeles, took trips to the Caribbean, Europe and South America. There was also the luxury tour bus emblazoned with the band’s name, Lights over Paris, that cost more than $750,000.
But is wasn’t all a con. One of the band’s songs managed a ranking on the Billboard charts.
Writes the AP, “Loan officers even visited a recording studio in Burbank to determine if Mawhinney (his real name) was credit-worthy. There, the singer said he was a successful ghostwriter for various artists and sought the loans to finish a recording room in the studio, among other expenses, court documents show.”