Bankers and Attorney Convicted On Multiple Charges

Three Coastal bankers guilty

By MICHAEL BRAGA and ANTHONY CORMIER Staff Writers

Published: Friday, May 9, 2014 at 1:00 a.m.

Last Modified: Thursday, May 8, 2014 at 10:38 p.m.

PANAMA CITY - A federal jury in Panama City convicted three bankers highlighted in the Herald-Tribune's "Breaking the Banks" investigative series, finding them guilty of defrauding a federally insured loan program out of nearly $4 million.

Facts

LENDERS:

Featured in H-T bank series, now convicted in
FDIC fraud

All three were top executives at Coastal Community Bank, which was shuttered by regulators in July 2010.

Terry Dubose was the bank's chief executive. Frank Baker was the bank's attorney and second-largest shareholder, and Elwood "Woody" West served as chief financial officer.

They were each indicted last summer on 12 counts of conspiring to commit wire fraud, making false statements and filing false claims against the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Now convicted, they face as long as 30 years each in federal prison. The former bankers are expected to be sentenced in July.

Coastal Community was one of 70 Florida banks that failed during the Great Recession and was featured prominently in a series of 2013 stories by the Herald-Tribune.

The newspaper found that the the bank was rife with insider deals that benefitted Dubose, his relatives, his friends and some of the bank's directors. When it failed, it cost the FDIC nearly $100 million.

Dubose, Baker and West were arrested two weeks after the Herald-Tribune published its series.

Fraud against

FDIC program

The three men's crimes involved fraud against the FDIC's Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program,

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