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Article
and Video Courtesy of Wink News
Published
November 14, 2013
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 Watch
VIDEO
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FORT MYERS, Fla. -- How would you like a luxury
waterfront condo near Fort Myers Beach? It's a great place that comes
with three bedrooms, resort-style amenities and beautiful views of the
gulf. And you've already paid for it.
During the height of the financial
crisis in the fall of 2008, Congress approved more than $700
billion of your money to bailout the banking industry. But
one banker chose to take that money and improve his
lifestyle instead of his bank.
Darryl Woods is the former Chairman and CFO of Mainstreet
Bank in Ashland, Missouri. A small town in the middle of the
state, not far from the University of Missouri.
In 2009 he applied for and received more than a million
dollars of bailout money for his bank. On February 2, 2009
Woods used more than a third |
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of
the money to buy a the Fort Myers Condo. He may have signed the papers,
but you paid for it.
Eight days later, in a letter to the Special Inspector General in Charge
of TARP, Woods lied about the condo.
Woods didn't want to talk to our
partners at KMOV in St. Louis when they arrived at his
house. Instead he drove away. But he did plead guilty in
Federal Court to lying about the condo.
"The idea was for financial stability and to get money to
customers. Certainly not to have some officer of the bank
buy a condo in Florida, that seems pretty clear to me," said
Cheryl Block, a law professor at Washington University in
St. Louis.
Block, who is writing a book on bailouts, says there isn't
enough regulation over the banking industry and the bailout
specifically. |
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"They reduced the amount of staff. So they don't have
very many people to investigate and stay on top of this sort of thing,"
Block said.
Woods is still awaiting sentencing. The maximum penalty is a year in
jail, a fine of a hundred thousand dollars and restitution.
He sold the condo this past February for $408,000.
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