The former vice president of Appalachian Community Bank was sentenced Friday to serve more than five years in federal prison for conspiring to defraud the institution.
Adam Teague, the former executive of the failed Ellijay bank, arranged sham real estate transactions and caused the bank to make about $7 million in fraudulent loans, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s office. He also pocketed money from two Florida condominiums he purchased through a shell corporation and refinanced, and he perpetrated other real estate-related frauds against the bank, the statement said.
Teague, 39, pleaded guilty in August and was convicted of the charges. He was sentenced to five years, 10 months in prison, to be followed by five years of supervised release.
Teague was also ordered to forfeit $5.8 million, the amount of money he received as a result of the conspiracy, and all the property purchased with the illegal proceeds.
“This bank was robbed from the inside, not by a bandit carrying a gun, but a bank officer carrying a pen,” U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said in a statement.
Earlier this year, Teague was barred from ever working in banking again. He was also hit with a $1.3 million civil penalty from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The Ellijay bank failed in 2010.
