FDIC Files Suit Against Imperial Bank : Seeks $8.4 Million for Alleged Negligence
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has filed a civil lawsuit seeking $8.4 million from Inglewood-based Imperial Bank for alleged negligence in transferring sums from accounts controlled by a Santa Monica insurance executive that led to the 1983 collapse of Community Bank in Hartford, S.D.
Norman Creighton, Imperial Bank president, said Wednesday that he was “a bit startled” to hear of the FDIC action filed in Los Angeles federal court but declined to comment further “because I have not yet seen the suit.”
The lawsuit focuses on four wire transfers totaling $10 million from the South Dakota bank to Imperial Bank in March and April, 1983.
State Closed Bank
According to the FDIC’s lawsuit, the money from the bank transfers was deposited by Imperial officials into various accounts of Fort Lincoln Insurance Group, a firm controlled by Anant Kumar Tripati.
“There was a directive from the bank in South Dakota to Imperial Bank that would have protected the money had it been followed by Imperial officials,” said Marshall G. Mintz, a Los Angeles lawyer who filed the suit for the FDIC.
Loss of funds in business dealings with Tripati led state banking authorities in South Dakota to close Community Bank on June 10, 1983.
The FDIC stepped in to assume the obligations of Community Bank, and, in the suit filed here Tuesday, the agency claimed that Imperial Bank is liable for $8.4 million of the money that remains unrecovered.
2 Banks Failed
Tripati began serving a 10-year term in January, 1984, at the federal prison in Tucson after his conviction in a Cheyenne, Wyo., federal court on embezzlement and fraud charges.
In his Wyoming trial on those charges, prosecutors charged that Tripati’s fraudulent business dealings led to the failure of the South Dakota bank and Western National Bank of Lovell, Wyo.
In addition to imposing the 10-year sentence on Tripati, U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer ordered him to make restitution of $2.5 million that he diverted from the banks to British American Insurance Co., based in the Fiji Islands.
