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Poppi Metaxas, 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.
April 3 -
A former loan officer at Colorado East Bank & Trust in Lamar, Colo., has admitted to his role in a $1.2 million fraud scheme.
March 27
A former Arkansas bank executive has been accused of committing fraud in order to conceal losses on a $1.5 million loan.
Gary Rickenbach, 56, was a senior vice president of Onebanc in Little Rock when the loan became uncollectable in 2008, according to a Thursday press release from the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. In 2009, Rickenbach and others allegedly sought to cover up the bad loan by using Tarp funds to make loans to companies that Rickenbach had created or controlled.
"The new loans made by Rickenbach made Onebanc appear to federal examiners to have fewer financial problems than was true," the release says.
Onebanc's parent company, OneFinancial Corp., received $17.3 million in Tarp funds in June 2009. The $379 million-asset company has yet to pay back the investment, according to the release. It had missed 19 dividend and interest payments totaling more than $2.8 million as of Dec. 31.
Rickenbach was charged in a U.S. district court in Little Rock with money laundering, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, misapplication of bank monies, making false entries to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and obstructing an OCC examination. His trial date has not yet been scheduled.
Rickenbach faces up to 20 years in prison for the money laundering charge and no more than five years in prison for the conspiracy charge, according to the release.
