A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced another former officer of the failed Omni National Bank in Atlanta for accepting bribes from contractors he selected to rehabilitate foreclosed properties.
Karim Walthour Lawrence, 34, of Atlanta, was sentenced to 21 months in prison followed by 5 years of supervised release and ordered to pay more than $600,000 in restitution. He pleaded guilty on Jan. 5 to charges that as a vice president he took hundreds of thousands of dollars in return for rewarding Omni-funded renovation contracts on foreclosed properties owned by the bank.
"It was a serious offense. It went on for a year. And it was a lot of money," U.S. District Judge Willis Hunt said.
Lawrence "took advantage of his position by accepting bribes in order to personally gain from the mortgage crisis," said Christy Romero of the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Other people sentenced for their actions in connection with Omni's demise include Jeffrey Levine, Brent Merriell, Christopher Bernard Loving and Delroy Oliver Davy.
Levine, Omni's co-founder and second-largest shareholder when the publicly traded bank folded, pleaded guilty in January 2010. He was sentenced to five years in prison for falsifying financial books to obscure losses on bad loans made by Omni.
Omni made short-term, high-interest loans -- often to borrowers with poor credit or lower incomes -- to renovate homes for quick resale or use as Section 8 housing.
Davy, an Omni borrower, was sentenced to 14 years in prison after pleading guilty in March 2010 to charges related to a house flipping scheme.
Merriell, who took out millions of dollars in illicit loans, was sentenced to 39 months for making false statements to the FDIC and for aggravated identity theft.
Loving was sentenced to three years probation for making false statements to agents of the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the FDIC in connection with an investigation of kickbacks he paid Lawrence for construction contracts.
Omni was shut down by federal regulators in March 2009.
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