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Report: #234402

Complaint Review: First Guarenty Bank And Trust - Jacksonville Florida

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  • Reported By: New York New York
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  • First Guarenty Bank And Trust 1234 King Street, Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville, Florida U.S.A.

First Guarenty Bank And Trust Transferred title out of company LLC. name and then encumbered the new title to the Restaurant without company knowlege Jacksonville Florida

*Author of original report: FDIC shuts down Jay Fant but gets no jail time and running for Florida Congress District 15 Nov 2014!

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A managing member of a company contributed contractual control of a resteraunt into a company he controlled as managing member. He moved to act on that contract that included financing and 1 million in instant equity. He closed on the purchase and that property and it's equity became property of him and his company.

Eight months later First Guarenty Bank recorded and transfered in clay county, Florida, the title of this same resteraunt equity and assets out of it's own company's name and into another non-related entity. Leaving First mortgage liens and other liens in limbo.

Then encumbered the title with millions in of it's own, only now the ex-company property belongs to a third party non-related entity.

Then and in this order,
somehow aquired a release of mortgage from the first mortgage holder of the previous owner and entity.

Mention of 15k payment to that first mortgage holder was listed on the HUD along with closing costs collected by the bank when closing with the second party.

Never ever pre-disclosing or pre-notifying abything at all to the original property owners and members of that company as to why or how this happened, nor to the sole managing member of the company of any of it's plans or it's actions that severly affected its title to it restaurant.

Any help your organisation can give this company to help retrieve it's property and to reinstate it's title into it's original owners would be welcome.

The bank has the money to ignore and run away from this indefinately.

No loans exist or ever existed between the original owner of this restuarant and this bank.

Thank you.

American
New York, New York
U.S.A.

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 02/05/2007 01:17 AM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/first-guarenty-bank-and-trust/jacksonville-florida/first-guarenty-bank-and-trust-transferred-title-out-of-company-llc-name-and-then-encumber-234402. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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#1 Author of original report

FDIC shuts down Jay Fant but gets no jail time and running for Florida Congress District 15 Nov 2014!

AUTHOR: Fear - ()

POSTED: Friday, June 20, 2014
First Guaranty Bank & Trust
 

 

Bad Loans: These figures are from the FDIC and show the amount of nonperforming loans on a bank’s books.3/316/309/3012/313/316/309/3012/313/316/309/3012/313/316/309/3012/313/316/309/3012/313/316/309/3012/313/316/309/3012/313/316/309/3012/313/316/309/3012/313/316/309/3012/313/316/309/30011,000,00022,000,00033,000,00044,000,00055,000,00066,000,00077,000,00088,000,00099,000,000
 
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
First Guaranty Bank & Trust
SPAN
May 1947-January 2012

HEADQUARTERS
Jacksonville

REGULATORS
OFR/FDIC

TOTAL ASSETS AT FAILURE
$377 million

COST TO FDIC
$82 million

DIRECTORS
Julian E. Fant Jr.
Julian E. Fant III
C. L. Haynes
Edward McCarthy III
Douglas J. Milne
A. C. Sinclair
On the surface, First Guaranty Bank & Trust of Jacksonville looked like an old-fashioned bank.
 
Oil paintings of its founders adorned the headquarters and a baby grand piano played in its lobby. The bank was led for years by the Fant family, among the most-respected men in Duval County.
 
But behind the scenes, First Guaranty made the same mistakes noted at other failed banks before the financial crisis.
 
It broke the law, regulators said, by providing too many loans to certain customers. It allowed a director to overdraw his deposit accounts 175 times. And it lent $1.6 million to a man previously arrested on charges of sexual battery, kidnapping, DUI and disorderly intoxication.
 
First Guaranty was the oldest bank in Jacksonville by the time it failed in January 2012.
 
Founded by the Fant family just after World War II, First Guaranty was always family-run.
 
Julian E. "Jay" Fant III, the grandson of the founder, was its last chairman and chief executive. The family was so well-regarded that the Jacksonville Business Journal found it tough finding local bankers to comment on the reasons for its failure.
 
But it was clear from media reports and a review of the bank's bad loans that First Guaranty had veered from traditionally conservative lending just in time for Florida's real estate boom.
 
For most of its history, the bank was cautious and grew by no more than 10 percent per year. But in 2003 — the year Jay Fant took over as chief executive — First Guaranty growth accelerated. Its loans increased from $160 million in September 2003 to $440 million by December 2007.
 
Regulators said many of these loans were poorly underwritten, with most going to commercial developers intent on erecting hotels, shopping centers and office buildings. At least one borrower had a lengthy rap sheet.
 
Howard S. Shafer and a company he controlled received four loans totaling $1.6 million despite his having had multiple arrests between 1993 and 2008. The most serious of those cases began in 1998, when police charged Shafer with sexual battery and kidnapping. Prosecutors dropped those counts and instead charged Shafer with aggravated battery, a felony for which he was sentenced to four months of house arrest and 44 months' probation.
 
In 2002, DUI and hit-run charges were dropped.
 
In February 2008, he was arrested again in connection with his purchase of an Orange Park restaurant and charged with grand theft. Prosecutors later dropped the case.
 
Shafer's company defaulted on loans from First Guaranty in May 2008 and was hit with judgments — which included attorney's fees and other penalties — totaling $2.5 million.
 
Shafer did not return messages left with his bankruptcy attorney.
 
Meanwhile, regulators pointed out that First Guaranty far exceeded its legal lending limits by providing more than $26 million to finance hotel ventures managed by Kantibhai Patel.
 
The bank attributed the oversight to Bonnie Dennis, a loan officer who handled Patel's account until she left the institution in 2008. Regulatory documents say Dennis did everything she could to accommodate Patel's loan requests. In the process, she failed to collect required documents showing his financial wherewithal and hid the fact that his loans exceeded lending limits.
 
"Chairman Fant stated that in the loans that he recalls approving, he relied on Ms. Dennis' strong assertions that there were no legal lending-limit issues," regulators wrote in their March 2009 report.
 
Regulators expressed shock at the cavalier manner in which First Guaranty treated its relationship with Jacksonville attorney Douglas J. Milne, who happened to be a bank directors.
 
They noted that Milne was late in making loan payments every month between May 2005 and August 2006, overdrawing his deposit accounts 175 times in the same period.
 
"Bank personnel contact Director Milne when his personal or business accounts have insufficient funds to pay checks presented," regulators wrote in their June 2006 report. "He then comes in and deposits funds to keep the accounts from being overdrawn."
 
Milne did not return three calls in June from the Herald-Tribune.
 
As First Guaranty's problems grew with the economic downturn, Fant tried to save the bank by selling seven of its eight branches and its trust division to a South Carolina bank.
 
The deal did not receive approval from regulators and First Guaranty ultimately failed.
 
Fant confessed to regulators in 2009 that in hindsight he did not "appreciate the gravity of the concerns raised in prior examinations and perhaps put too much faith in former senior lending officer Bonnie Dennis."
 
Fant did not return three calls to his home in June. Dennis could not be located.

 

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