Bank Insider Sentenced For Fraudulent Loan Scheme

 Audrey Strauss, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that HERODE CHANCY, who at the time of the offense was employed as a manager at a Manhattan branch of a national bank (“Bank-1”), was sentenced today to 30 months in prison for his role in a commercial loan fraud scheme for loans totaling over $1 million.  CHANCY’s sentence was imposed by United States District Judge Lewis J. Liman. 

U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said: “Bank employee Herode Chancy used fake businesses, doctored bank statements, and stolen identities in an effort to obtain over $1 million in commercial loans.  Now Chancy has rightly been sentenced to prison for his crime.  Prosecutions like this one should serve as notice to individuals in positions of trust at financial institutions that engaging in corrupt criminal conduct will lead to prosecution and prison.”

According to the Complaint, Indictment, and statements made in court:

From at least in or about March 2019 up to and including at least in or about March 2020, CHANCY and codefendant Adedayo Ilori conspired to fraudulently obtain business loans from a third-party commercial lender with the intent not to repay the loans – i.e., with the intent to “bust out” the loans.  CHANCY and Ilori together submitted eight fraudulent business loan applications for a total of $1,025,000 in business loans.  The business loan applications submitted by CHANCY and Ilori included doctored bank statements and listed the identities of other persons as the loan applicants, including stolen identities.  CHANCY and Ilori also opened bank accounts using the identities of those other persons in order to receive the loan payments from the third-party commercial lender.  CHANCY and Ilori subsequently conspired with codefendant Michael Albarella, another bank manager at Bank-1, to open a bank account using a stolen identity to launder approximately $200,000 of the expected proceeds of the loan scheme.  Albarella opened the bank account at Bank-1 using the stolen identity provided by CHANCY and Ilori, and Albarella accepted a $10,000 bribe to open the bank account.        

CHANCY and Ilori believed that the underwriter for the third-party commercial lender was participating in the scheme and agreed to pay the underwriter a “commission” for the underwriter’s role in the scheme.  In reality, however, the underwriter was an undercover law enforcement officer. 

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In addition to the prison term, CHANCY, 41, of Bellerose, New York, was sentenced to two years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $10,000 in fraudulent proceeds.

On August 5, 2021, Albarella was sentenced to six months in prison and three years of supervised release by Judge Liman.  Ilori is scheduled to be sentenced on October 13, 2021.

Ms. Strauss praised the outstanding investigative work of the New York FBI’s Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force and Homeland Security Investigation’s El Dorado Task Force. 

This case is being handled by the Office’s Money Laundering and Transnational Criminal Enterprises Unit.  Assistant United States Attorneys Tara M. La Morte and Cecilia E. Vogel are in charge of the prosecution.