A former vice president and controller at One Bank & Trust who admitted embezzling $110,000 from the bank to pay down his credit cards was given a probationary sentence Tuesday in lieu of prison time, largely because of the help he has provided federal prosecutors in other fraud cases involving former One Bank officers.
Matthew Sweet, 42, who worked at the bank until Feb. 29, 2012, admitted in January that from 2009 through 2011, he used his position as a bank officer to issue cashier's checks, using bank funds, to pay roughly $5,000 a month on his personal credit-card debt.
When caught by bank officials, Sweet borrowed money from a relative to repay the full amount he had stolen over three years, prosecutors said in January. But what prosecutors didn't reveal until Tuesday is that Layton Stuart, then the bank's chairman and chief executive officer, promised Sweet that in return for him repaying the money, the bank wouldn't turn him in to the FBI.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Pat Harris also revealed Tuesday that during a forensic audit after Stuart's death March 26, 2013, investigators discovered that $101,003 of the money Sweet thought he had paid into the bank's coffers as restitution was actually deposited into a Bank of America account controlled by Stuart.
Harris said Tuesday that Sweet has agreed to testify, in a nonjury forfeiture trial scheduled to begin Aug. 17 before Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Miller, that the $101,003 found in the Bank of America account equaled the amount of one of two cashier's checks he used to pay back the stolen funds.
Sweet said that at Stuart's direction, he paid back the money in two cashier's checks, one for $9,662.25 to the bank and the other for $101,003.49 to Stuart, believing that both checks were to be deposited into the bank's accounts. In return for his payment, he said, he was allowed to formally resign under a confidential separation agreement.
In July 2013, just 3½ months after Stuart's death at age 62 from cardiovascular disease and five months after federal agents searched his home, prosecutors sought to have nearly $18 million in Stuart's assets turned over to the government, claiming that the property constituted "the fruits and derivatives of criminal activity."
The forfeiture complaint identified $17,693,837 in life insurance proceeds and the $101,003.49 from the Bank of America account as the largest amounts of the fraud. Last year, Stuart's estate agreed to pay the bank $3 million, out of the nearly $18 million the government had seized, to settle part of the case.
Harris also revealed Tuesday that Sweet has agreed to testify in a money-laundering conspiracy trial of four former One Bank executives -- Gary Alan Rickenbach, Bradley Stephen Paul, Tom Monroe Whitehead and Michael Francis Heald. The jury trial, scheduled to begin Dec. 14, is before U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker.
Rickenbach was a senior executive vice president until February 2013. Heald was chief operating officer until July 2011. Whitehead was chief financial officer until December 2012, and Paul is the bank's former executive vice president until late last year. Rickenbach was indicted on April 2, 2014. The indictment was superseded on March 3 to include the other three men as well.
Sweet was indicted on Nov. 6, 2013, on 60 charges -- 30 counts of bank fraud and 30 counts of money laundering. In his plea agreement signed Jan. 7, he pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering, stemming from a single transaction on Jan. 20, 2009, in return for the other counts being dismissed. Harris told U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes then that Sweet had repaid the entire amount he had embezzled -- $110,665.74 -- and that he would recommend that Sweet receive probation.
Sweet, represented by attorney Chad Green of Little Rock, apologized for his crime on Tuesday, telling Holmes: "I should not have used the bank's money. My conduct is inexcusable, and I accept full responsibility for my actions."
Sweet also said he has "committed to being a better person" and hoped to avoid prison so that he can retain his current job and remain a part of his two daughters' lives.
Federal sentencing guidelines suggested six to 12 months in prison for Sweet, and Holmes said he has found the guidelines to be "pretty on" when it comes to sentences in fraud cases involving numerous acts of dishonesty over a sustained period of time, as well as the abuse of a position of trust.
Holmes said his sentence of a year's probation and a $1,000 fine is within the penalty range recommended by the guidelines because it requires Sweet to spend the first six months on home detention with electronic monitoring, at his own expense. He ordered Sweet to refrain from using alcohol during that time, and to submit to periodic alcohol testing, and treatment if probation officers deem it necessary, because of two driving-while-intoxicated convictions in his past.
In a sentencing memorandum, Green said the theft was out of character for Sweet, a 1990 graduate of Crossett High School who "has always been a hard worker, and has no history of stealing from employers."
Metro on 04/29/2015