SF Bankers Become First TARP Recipients To Be Charged With Fraud | NBC Bay Area

The occupy Wall Street movement may finally have a poster boy or two to point the finger at.

Three San Francisco bank executives became the first senior executives to receive federal bailout money to be criminally charged with trying to defraud the government.

United Commercial Bank CEO Thomas Wu and vice presidents Ebrahim Shabudin and Thomas Yu are being charged with cooking their books and lying to auditors before accepting a $298 million taxpayer bailout, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

"Shabudin and Yu are the first senior executives of a TARP bank charged in connection with a scheme to defraud investors, which included the Treasury, and by extension the American taxpayer," acting TARP Special Inspector General Christy Romero said in a statement.

In 2008 the bank received $298 million from then President George W. Bush's Troubled Asset Relief Program.

They soon after filed for bankruptcy. Now they are being charged by the government. It does seem a bit odd that it would be a relatively small California bank that is so far removed from Washington is the first to be up on fraud charges. I am not surprised but it is likely, in my opinion, that this bank did nothing different than any of the too big to fail banks or any other bank that was given TARP funds. It is likely that this bank just didn't have as powerful a lobby in Washington or enough money to get defense lawyers to defend them with the zeal of the larger banks. READ THE FULL STORY HERE

SF Bankers Become First TARP Recipients To Be Charged With Fraud | NBC Bay Area