According to the release, Brady Torgerson, a former banker, was sentenced. According to the Justice Department, Torgerson orchestrated fraudulent banking transactions between 2019 and 2021 while he was employed as the head at First Security Bank West and as a loan officer at Union Bank. According to the release, “Bank fraud is a serious crime that damages the honest financial institutions we have here in North Dakota,” Mac Schneider (U.S. attorney) said. The sentence is also a reminder of the high price that white-collar crime comes with. “Among other things, Torgerson was accused in entering false information into bank computers, increasing loans so they exceed the original loan amounts, as well as extending loan maturity dates in order to conceal his activities. A separate federal trial in New Orleans ended last week with a jury convicting Ashton Ryan Jr. of dozens of fraud-related charges. The jury found that the crimes were connected with the 2017 failure of the New Orleans company. Prosecutors claimed Ryan approved numerous seven-figure loans to borrowers that he knew he could not repay. In court documents, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana stated that Ryan and other former executives made new loans to the same borrowers and used the proceeds of existing loans. The borrowers collectively owed $260 million to First NBC when it failed. Ryan, 75, was convicted of all 46 charges. The maximum penalty for each of the charges is 30 years imprisonment.