Ex-bank president in Texas gets 8 years for fake loans, arson to try to cover up fraud
(The AEGIS Alliance) – An Ex-Texas bank president who issued millions in fake loans over nearly a decade and lit a fire to attempt to cover up the fraud has been sentenced to eight years behind bars on Tuesday, according to prosecutors.
57-year-old Anita Gail Moody gave a guilty plea last June to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and arson.
She was ordered to pay over $11 million in restitution, which is what the now-closed Enloe State Bank that she ran suffered in losses, the Eastern District of Texas U.S. Attorney’s Office stated.
Moody was president of the financial institution in Cooper that’s about 80 miles northeast of Dallas, and the fraud she pleaded guilty to started back in 2012.
In May 2019 at some point prior to the Texas Department of Banking being scheduled to conduct an evaluation, Moody set a fire inside the bank’s boardroom with files left on a desk, all of which had been burned, prosecutors said.
She had created greater than 100 fraudulent loans through the years, prosecutors stated in courtroom documents.
Some of the money Moody used went to her boyfriend’s and associates’ companies, for family, and for her personal lifestyle, along with a Jeep. Other federal investigators said a number of the loans had been taken out to pay the interest and principal on the others, in order that nothing would appear amiss.
Moody “has experienced great remorse over these events and takes full responsibility for her actions,” Moody’s lawyer, John C. Ginn, said in an email on Tuesday evening.
“She is ready to serve her sentence and will make amends as circumstances allow in the future,” Ginn said.
Ginn argued in court documents that Moody labored for the financial institution her entire adult life and described an out-of-control lifestyle including that she first lent the money out of sympathy, however, in 2012 she began using the loan money for herself.
“Criminal conduct that affects the financial health of a small, local lender can send a negative ripple effect throughout the entire community,” acting U.S. Attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei stated in a press release.
The bank was closed by the Texas Department of Banking in 2019. It was chartered in 1928. At the time, the department mentioned it was pressured to take action “due to insider abuse and fraud by former officers.”
A former bank vice president, Jeannie Swaim, pleaded guilty last year to one count and was sentenced to 2 years in jail and ordered to pay over $410,000 in restitution.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures deposits, was appointed as a receiver after the bank failed. The loss to the agency’s deposit insurance coverage fund was about $21 million, an inspector general’s report indicated.
Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
