Ex-exec at One banc faces fraud charges

A federal grand jury on Wednesday indicted a former Onebanc vice president on bank-fraud and money-laundering charges, according to the indictment released Friday.

Matthew Sweet, 41, of Timbo was indicted on 30 counts each of bank fraud and money laundering. Sweet was released on his own recognizance after a court appearance.

While working for Onebanc, Sweet used nearly $75,000 of the bank’s money to pay his personal credit-card bills from about January 2009 to October 2011, according to the indictment. As the bank’s vice president and controller, Sweet signed the bank’s cashier’s checks drawn from the company’s clearing account for credit-card transactions and mailed the checks to his two personal credit cards, the indictment states.

The bank’s former chief financial officer confronted Sweet about the cashier’s checks in 2012, and the two agreed Sweet could resign but reimburse the company by buying two cashier’s checks from another bank, the indictment states.

Sweet paid more than $9,600 to the bank and about $101,000 to Layton Stuart, the bank’s former president and chief executive officer, the indictment states.

Sweet is to stand trial Dec. 9 before U.S. District Judge J. Leon Holmes.

The bank-fraud charge carries a 30-year maximum prison sentence and a $1 mil- lion fine. If convicted on the money-laundering charges, he could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine for each count.