Hunter
04/22/21
A former bank president is going to federal prison and has been ordered to pay over a million dollars in restitution after being found guilty of defrauding four different institutions over a six-year-period.
The Gazette reports that 40-year-old Christopher Goerdt was President and Chief Executive Officer at People’s Trust and Savings Bank in Riverside after he started in 2012 until he resigned at the end of 2015. During that time, investigators said he charged nearly 90,000 on a card in the bank’s name for his personal use and diverted loan proceeds from bank customers to make the payments. He’s also accused of falsifying loan documents, altering appraisals, making false statements to investigators and obtaining loans without the knowledge of customers.
Knowing he was being investigated, Goerdt took a job with Farm Bureau Insurance, where he solicited customers to sign up for insurance. He received bonuses for obtaining policies. At the same time, he was an officer of Country Bank and in March of 2016 was charged with embezzling or misapplying over $2000 from one customer and applying it to another customer’s account.
Goerdt was sentenced in Federal Court in Davenport earlier this week by Judge Stephanie Rose. He was found guilty of bank fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and misapplication by a bank officer. The case was investigated by the FBI and FDIC branches.