Bank officer gets 27 months for stealing $200k; execs get no punishment for stealing $300M from TARP

The mid-level bank officer who stole the money to support his gambling habit, Alex Yan, 50, was sentenced to 27 months in prison in June 2009 and ordered to pay restitution to UCB of $235,695. He pleaded guilty about two months after a grand jury indicted him in November 2008, which happened to be the same month UCB received its $298.7 million under the TARP Capital Purchase Program.

Treasury lost its entire investment when UCB failed a year later. At the time of UCB’s closure, which cost the FDIC’s insurance fund $1.5 billion, an FDIC press release said the bank’s problem loans might have been identified earlier were it not for “alleged fraud exercised by former senior management, currently under investigation by the relevant authorities.” So far, Yan remains the only former UCB banker charged by the government with breaking the law.