The former general counsel at a failed New Orleans bank has pleaded guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to commit bank fraud.

Gregory St. Angelo, who was GC at First NBC Bank from its inception in 2006 to its collapse in 2017, faces a maximum of 30 years in prison and $1 million fine when he is scheduled to be sentenced in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in October.

According to information contained in a 22-page factual basis that the U.S. Attorney's Office submitted in connection with the plea agreement—and that St. Angelo stipulated as true—he conspired with other former bank executives to falsify documents and take out loans that appeared to be paid off but never were.

Through his attorney Peter Thomson, a member of Stone Pigman Walther Wittmann in New Orleans, St. Angelo declined to comment on the plea. 

According to the government's factual basis, St. Angelo and his alleged co-conspirators renewed and increased lines of credit, paid off matured loans with new loans, made loan payments with loan proceeds, used loan proceeds to cover overdrafts, and submitted false and fraudulent documents—all designed to hide the bank's true financial condition.

In fact, such allegations form the basis of a civil lawsuit also filed in federal court in New Orleans in May by the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors in the bankruptcy of the bank, claiming that such an alleged conspiracy deceived regulators about the bank's poor financing.

By the time of First NBC's nearly $1 billion crash that marked the costliest failure of an American bank since the height of the 2008 financial crisis, St. Angelo and the companies he controlled had about $46.7 million in loans from the bank, which also had paid him nearly $10 million for purported tax credit investments, according to court documents. The civil complaint also said that as the bank's GC St. Angelo received a monthly $40,000 retainer.