Ellington, Missouri bank manager sentenced to nearly 5 years for bank fraud

Irvin R. Eddington, Jr., 43, of Ellington, Missouri was sentenced to 57 months in prison on bank fraud and embezzlement charges, involving his issuance of fraudulent letters of credit while he was Vice President and Manager of the Ellington Branch of People’s Community State Bank (PCSB).
In addition to the prison sentence, he was ordered to pay restitution of $1,195,696.

Eddington pleaded guilty in February to one felony count of bank fraud and one felony count of embezzlement by a bank employee

He is accused of issuing more than $1.3 million in fraudulent unsecured irrevocable letters of credit to an associate in the name of PCSB from January 2004 to October 2011. Then, the associate secured loans from other places using the letters of credit as collateral. The associate kept and used the funds from those loans. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office Eastern District of Missouri, Eddington did not have the authority to issue any of those letters of credit and did so without the knowledge or permission of the bank.

Eddington is also accused of not discussing the unauthorized letters when it came up a bank board meetings. The total value of the letters of credit issued and thus the potential loss to the bank for this scheme, was approximately $1,340,896, however, based on loan defaults to date, PCSB is liable for approximately $674,336. Eddington approved a nominee load to two bank customers on March 11, 2010. He reported the loan of $45,000 to the bank, but did report he was receiving the proceeds of the loan. That particular scheme cost the bank $58,500.

From February to October 2011 Eddington created fake PCSB money orders funded by advance from customer line of credit to get cash or pay his bills. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Eddington forged the customer's name of customers he knew did not monitor their loan histories and who did not have access to their account online. He would then tell the teller the customer had come into the bank earlier that day and he was handling the transaction for the customer. He also would sometimes deliberately not mail the customers he targeted their bank statements.

In another instance, Eddington did not tell the bank loan committee that one of his associates would be receiving more than $50,000 cash from a $249,000 loan. If they had known that, they would not have approved the loan. However, the loan was approved on August 4, 2011. The collateral for the loan was also misrepresented because the associated provided a fraudulent title insurance policy as part of the loan application.