Farkas guilty on all 14 counts (Faces 420 years)

The Ocala Star Banner ^ | Tuesday, April 19, 2011 | Suevon Lee

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - A jury has convicted Lee Farkas, the former chairman and majority shareholder of Ocala's Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp., on 14 counts of bank, wire and securities fraud for his role in a $1.9 billion fraud scheme that toppled the mortgage company and a major bank.

According to Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virgina, the verdict was returned 5 p.m. Tuesday, after a full day and a half of deliberations that began Monday afternoon at the conclusion of a 10-day trial at the federal courthouse here.

A sentencing date is also being set for Farkas, 58, who faces up to 30 years in prison on each count when he appears before U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema on a future date.

In what prosecutors have described as the “largest and longest running fraud scheme in the country,” Farkas, with the help of several co-conspirators, was accused of selling fake loan assets to Colonial Bank, once one of the country's largest, and diverting funds from a company-owned financing vehicle to help cover Taylor Bean's operating expenses.

They say the scheme grew to encompass the federal government when Farkas led a failed effort to raise $300 million in capital so Colonial BancGroup Inc. could receive Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) funds in 2009. As the deal unraveled over accounting irregularities, Taylor Bean's Ocala headquarters and Colonial's Mortgage Warehouse Lending Division in Orlando were raided by federal agents. Both institutions filed for bankruptcy in August 2009.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

The former owner of the Taylor, Bean and Whittaker Mortgage Company, which, with over a thousand employees, was nearly the entirety of the non-Bank financial business in Ocala, faces up to 420 years in Federal Prison at sentencing.

[Repeal The 17th]

Fred Farkle and Ferd Berfle?

[mountainlion]

Wasn’t there a sister Fanny?

[Mr. Jeeves]

Angelo Mozilo could be indicted on identical charges, were it not for the inside information he has on his friends in high places.

[Lurker]

Perp photo.

[Repeal The 17th]

So, she was shot in the fracas?
No, she was shot midway between her fracas and her navel.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

You guys may not have heard of him. but this was ‘the “largest and longest running fraud scheme in the country,”’ Wiped out 1000 jobs in Ocala, about 3% of the labor force, and destroyed Colonial Bank in orlando, while trying to steal billions from TARP.

[PAR35]

and destroyed Colonial Bank in orlando

Actually, Colonial Bank in Montgomery, AL.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

‘Actually, Colonial Bank in Montgomery, AL’

OK, extreme north Orlando!

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

Farkas, with the help of several co-conspirators, was accused of selling fake loan assets to Colonial Bank, once one of the country's largest, and diverting funds from a company-owned financing vehicle to help cover Taylor Bean's operating expenses.They say the scheme grew to encompass the federal government when Farkas led a failed effort to raise $300 million in capital so Colonial BancGroup Inc. could receive Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) funds in 2009. As the deal unraveled over accounting irregularities, Taylor Bean's Ocala headquarters and Colonial's Mortgage Warehouse Lending Division in Orlando were raided by federal agents.

[nkycincinnatikid]

One down.
Just a couple of thousand more to go.

[DWC]

Sparkle farkle.

[org.whodat]

From both parties, and he probably got tarp funds.

[sarasmom]

Factually, Orlando, FL was the Colonial Bank branch office most heavily involved in the fraud with Farkas’s “mortgage investment” company.

I wonder what, if any experience Farkus had with the dotcom bubble bust.

Oh well.
One down, several tens of thousands criminals yet to be prosecuted.

[Damifino]

My wife interviewed there just weeks before this all came down. She was very disappointed she wasn’t extended an offer. Later we guessed they had bigger things to deal with. She said it was an odd place because they had art, real art, everywhere in building. To the point that it was gaudy. Guess when you skim a cool 1.7 billion off the top you can afford stuff from the Dutch guy with a hearing problem.

[dfwgator]

“He had yellow eyes! So, help me, God! Yellow eyes!”

[tang-soo]

Two cups in the front, two loops in the back... how do they do it?

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

‘She said it was an odd place because they had art, real art, everywhere in building.’

It was the best in Ocala, by a long shot.

[Liz]

THIS IS INTERESTING----COULD BE A DEM CAMPAIGN MONEY LAUNDERING SCHEME Farkas' scheme grew to encompass the federal government when Farkas led an effort to raise $300 million in capital so Colonial BancGroup Inc. could receive Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) funds in 2009.

We need to find out how much of Farkas' haul was bundled and transferred to Obama and the Dems. Farkas could have been using the Madoff MO: creating a labyrinth of interrelated international funds, institutions and financial entities of unparalleled complexity and breadth......with assets and businesses in multiple places offshore that hid government fraud, thievery, money launderering, tax evasion, out of sight of taxpayers, the IRS, SEC, FEC and US banking laws.

=========================================

The $700B TARP Bailout is now being called, "A MASTERFUL DECEIT." If HR 1424 was a 'MASTERFUL DECEIT' then CONGRESS didn't do its job, as usual.

TITLE I—TROUBLED ASSETS RELIEF PROGRAM (required 'Congressional Oversight' sections listed)
Sec. 101. Purchases of troubled assets.
Sec. 102. Insurance of troubled assets.
Sec. 103. Considerations.
Sec. 104. Financial Stability Oversight Board.
Sec. 105. Reports.
Sec. 107. Contracting procedures.
Sec. 108. Conflicts of interest.
Sec. 111. Executive compensation and corporate governance.
Sec. 116. Oversight and audits.
Sec. 118. Funding.
Sec. 119. Judicial review and related matters.
Sec. 121. Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Sec. 125. Congressional Oversight Panel.
Sec. 127. Cooperation with the FBI.
Sec. 129. Disclosures on exercise of loan authority.

In HR 1424, there are enough rules, regs and CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT REQUIRED that not one Thin Dime should have been 'misspent.' So if anything crooked did go on, we need to hold Congress responsible.

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REFERENCE TARP was not designed to be a pool of money available for bailout of just anything that didn't move, like a couple of bankrupt unionized companies in the automobile industry. It was very specific in its purpose to provide liquidity to frozen banking and financial system and stave off the run on the banks (attack on the financial system, by proxy) and allow the 'netting' of the [frozen] assets on the books of financial institutions, in the aftermath of fall of Lehman Bros and run on trillions of dollars in the money market funds in the consequent "breaking the buck" by private Reserve Primary Fund managed by Bruce Bent.

[BunnySlippers]

I remember Margie Farkle.