by Pam Martens and Russ Martens, Wall St On Parade:

Last year, the staff of a federally-insured bank in Kansas, Heartland Tri-State Bank, wired out more than one-third of the amount the bank held in deposits to a crypto scam. Why did they do that? Because the CEO of the bank, Shan Hanes, told them to do it. Hanes had become one more crypto sucker seduced by the allure of a get-rich-quick scheme.

On Monday, Hanes was sentenced in a case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice to 24 years in prison for embezzling $47.1 million (via the wire transfers shown in the graph above) from the bank he was in charge of protecting. The bank failed last July with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) stepping in to make depositors whole while the investors in the bank (shareholders) were wiped out.