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MidCoast Community Bank's founder and former chief executive pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges of bank fraud and money laundering.
December 18 -
The former president and chief executive of Bank of Choice in Greeley, Colo., will pay $65,000 to investors to settle charges he violated registration and anti-fraud provisions of the Colorado Securities Act.
November 22 -
The former president and chief executive of a failed bank in Savannah, Ga., has pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in a loan-fraud scheme.
November 13
The former president and chief executive of Gateway Bank in Oakland, Calif., has been accused of orchestrating a fraud scheme to disguise the bank's crumbling financial condition.
Poppi Metaxas is charged with bank fraud, bank fraud conspiracy and perjury, according to a Wednesday press release from the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The Inspector General is involved in the case because the $212 million-asset Gateway applied to receive funding from the Tarp program. Metaxas was arraigned in a San Francisco federal court on Wednesday.
In 2009, Metaxas allegedly spearheaded a scheme to receive Tarp funds by convincing the bank's regulators that it had sold toxic mortgage loans to outside investors for $15 million. In fact, prosecutors say that Gateway self-funded the sale by making a sham loan to a now-defunct mortgage lending client: Ideal Mortgage Bankers, which did business as Lend America. Lend America then passed the money on to three investors purporting to purchase the troubled mortgage loans, which in turn gave the money back to Gateway as a $3.64 million down payment on the sale.
"To conceal the fraudulent 'round trip' of the loan funds, in October 2009, Metaxas provided false testimony to the Office of Thrift Supervision when she was asked about the source of the down payment," the release says.
Metaxas' trial date has not yet been set. She will be tried in the Brooklyn U.S. District Court.
