Former Community Bank & Trust Executive Pleads Guilty to Fraud Charges
Randy Jones, a former executive vice president with Community Bank & Trust who worked for the bank for 30 years, pled guilty last week in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia for an alleged multi-million dollar fraud scheme, according to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Specifically, Jones was alleged to have made loans to a customer, Joseph Penick, Jr., to purchase tracts of land in North Georgia. Penick is alleged to have paid Jones $770,000. Penick has pled guilty to his involvement in the scheme.
Jones was also alleged to have used family members and friends to obtain more than $800,000 in loans from Community Bank & Trust to purchase an interest in six Zaxby's restaurants.
Community Bank & Trust was shut down by regulators in January of 2010. The bank opened in 1900 and had been insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation since 1934. Before it failed, it had 36 branches across the region and $1.1 billion in assets. An FDIC report in September of 2010 found that Community Bank & Trust failed to follow its own loan policy and had made more than $10 million in bad loans. Georgia has had more failed banks than any other state--52 since 2008.
Investigators say he used the names of family members without their consent to obtain more than $800,000 in loans from the bank, which he used to buy a stake in six Zaxby's restaurants. And they claim he approved more than $2.8 million in loans to fraudulent borrowers so that a customer who was a real estate developer could pay down interest on loans.
The bank failures have also led to a number of prosecutions and suits against former bank executives, employees and others. Five people with ties to Omni National Bank of Atlanta were convicted on bank fraud and other charges after the bank collapsed during a federal mortgage fraud probe. A lawsuit by the FDIC also alleges that former officers of Alpharetta-based Integrity Bank engaged in gross negligence and breach of fiduciary duty relating to making bad loans. One of the defendants is State Senator Jack Murphy, a former bank official and the new Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Sen. Murphy has denied any wrongdoing.
