- Key insight: A single borrower obtained fraudulent commercial loans from bank after bank for nearly a decade, using companies he controlled and false equipment-purchase applications.
- What's at stake: The case shows how commercial-loan underwriting can be gamed repeatedly across institutions; U.S. Bank alone is owed about $5.6 million.
- Supporting data: Restitution totals $19,414,187.15 across six lenders: U.S. Bank ($5.6M), Arvest ($4.4M), Old National ($4.2M), BMO/Bank of the West ($3.3M), WaFd ($1.3M) and De Lage Landen ($630K).
Overview bullets generated by AI with editorial review.
A California man will spend six and a half years in federal prison for a nearly decade-long scheme that extracted $39 million in fraudulent commercial loans from a string of banks.
On Tuesday, a federal judge in Las Vegas sentenced Gary Topolewski (64, of Northridge, California) 78 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release. The court also ordered him to pay more than $19.4 million in restitution.
Topolewski pleaded guilty in December to one count of bank fraud. He faced charges that he obtained loans from multiple banks for years using false applications and companies he controlled.
Prosecutors charged Topolewski in 2024 and filed a
He submitted false commercial loan applications through three companies he controlled, Topolewski America Inc., Morrison Knudsen Services Inc. and Metal Jeans Inc., according to the Justice Department.
He told lenders the money would buy large industrial earth-moving equipment or fund working capital. He never bought the equipment, prosecutors said.
Topolewski had the banks he defrauded send the loan money to Finning Nevada, a company he secretly controlled and that posed as the seller. He never told the banks he stood on both sides of the sale as both buyer and seller.
In naming his fraudulent equipment dealer company, Topolewski borrowed the name of a legitimate Caterpillar equipment dealer (Finning International) despite having nothing to do with it.
Topolewski diverted and laundered the money from those fraudulent sales, spending some on real estate and using some to make
The office of Lucas Gaffney, who represented Topolewski in the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
He owes six lenders money, according to the
He owes U.S. Bank $5.6 million, Arvest Bank $4.4 million, Old National Bank $4.2 million, and BMO (through the Bank of the West operation it
Topolewski also owes WaFd Bank (known as Washington Federal at the time of his fraud) about $1.3 million and De Lage Landen Financial Services, an equipment-finance lender, about $630,000.
Those six payees account for the $19.4 million in restitution the court ordered. It is less than the roughly $39 million he drew from them because he repaid earlier loans with later ones.
Spokespeople for U.S. Bank, Arvest, Old National, BMO and WaFd did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Justice Department
The restitution list names five of those seven banks, plus the commercial lender De Lage Landen. The other two banks appear nowhere in the restitution order, and the court records do not say why he owes them nothing.
In addition to restitution to the five banks and one commercial lender, the court also ordered Topolewski to
One of Topolewski's fraudulent loans (the one to which he pleaded guilty, worth roughly $3.5 million) relied on a stolen identity; he submitted a California driver's license belonging to a victim whom the court did not name in the judgment against Topolewski.
As a condition of his eventual release, the judge barred him from contacting the victim.
