A former general counsel of a New Orleans bank pleaded guilty June 29 to charges of conspiracy to defraud the financial institution he once worked for, the Department of Justice and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) said in a release dated July 2.
The two agencies said that Gregory St. Angelo, 54, of Tammany Parish pleaded guilty to the charges of conspiracy to defraud First NBC Bank, a New Orleans-based bank that failed in April 2017. St. Angelo, the U.S. Attorney’s office said, was general counsel (and a borrower from the bank) from “around 2006 through the fall of 2016.”
According to the agencies, St. Angelo, along with other unnamed officers of the bank (“Bank President A,” “Bank Officer B”), conspired “to enrich themselves unjustly by disguising the true financial status of St. Angelo,” other organizations and other borrowers, “concealing the accurate performance of loans, and misrepresenting the nature of payments to St. Angelo and certain entities.”
According to the FDIC and U.S. Attorney’s office, Bank President A was a founder of First NBC Bank and acted as its president and Chief Executive Officer from in or around May 2006, until in or around December 2016. Bank Officer B was employed by First NBC Bank from in or around 2006 through April 2017, as its Chief Credit Officer, and was responsible for, among other things, the overall quality of the bank’s lending function.
Sentencing for St. Angelo is set for Oct. 3; he faces up to 30 years’ imprisonment, a fine of more than $1 million or twice the gross gain to him or the gross loss of any victims, five years of supervised release, and other penalties.
Bank General Counsel Pleads Guilty To Conspiracy to Defraud First NBC Bank