WASHINGTON Billie Cherry, the former chairman and president of the failed First National Bank of Keystone, has been indicted by a West Virginia grand jury on 25 federal counts of bank fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, conspiracy, and mail fraud.
Ms. Cherry was scheduled to appear in probationary court Friday.
The indictment said that she stole $4.28 million from the accounts of the late J. Knox McConnell, the banks founder and her former boss.
It alleged that Ms. Cherry and former Keystone senior vice president Terry Lee Church, who has already been convicted and sentenced in connection with the 1999 failure, conspired to steal money from Mr. McConnells estate as executors of his will.
The indictment also charged that Ms. Cherry used misappropriated funds to purchase two condominiums and a 1956 Ford Thunderbird.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. sued Ms. Cherry, Ms. Church, and two other former bank executives last year for $500 million, charging them with bank fraud and embezzling $20 million. That civil case is still pending.
The FDIC has predicted that the failure of $1 billion-asset Keystone will cost the Bank Insurance Fund $750 million to $850 million, which would make it one of the costliest failures in history.
