A former senior vice president of Firstar Bank, N.A., of Sallisaw, Okla., is being charged by federal banking regulators with fabricating documents to grow his line of credit with the bank until it reached $3.9 million and causing losses to Firstar Bank and others, according to a notice issued in July by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).
This notice is included on the OCC’s list of enforcement actions, released Aug. 15 and taken in recent months. Also on that list are seven civil money penalties, two formal agreements, one personal cease-and-desist order, and five orders of prohibition.
William Brian Mulder, according to the above-noted notice, had previously worked for Merrill Lynch and was a customer of Firstar Bank in 2011, before he was hired as a senior vice president of the bank. It says he obtained loans from the bank while a Merrill Lynch employee and later got the bank to consolidate those into a single line of credit. He was hired by the bank in August 2012, it continues, and modified his line of credit to increase his credit limit to $3,651,000. The following year he obtained an increase in the limit to $3.9 million.
According to the OCC’s notice, Mulder had offered numerous insurance policies as collateral as well as claimed he was the sole beneficiary of a trust valued at $152 million and, later $205 million. Reportedly, none of these things existed. Over time, the bank sold participations his line of credit to three other banks. Firstar Bank later fired him and filed a civil suit. It recovered some of the loss it realized (about $1.5 million of a total $3.9 million) through a bond claim.
The notice says Mulder “knowingly executed a scheme to defraud federally insured financial institutions or obtained credits by false or fraudulent means, made materially false statements and intentionally provided false documents and made false statements. The OCC is waiting for a hearing on its charges in the Northern District of Oklahoma “or such other location to be determined by the Administrative Law Judge.”
The OCC plans to order Mulder to pay $2,359,256.56 in restitution among his bank and the other three and to pay a $250,000 civil money penalty. It also seeks to bar him from any future participation in the affairs of any federally insured financial institution.