CALIFORNIA
The former vice president of a California wholesale tool company was sentenced to five years in prison for creating numerous shell corporations to get bank loans from East West Bank that resulted in more than $9 million losses for the bank, officials said.
U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder of California sentenced Chung Yu Yeung, aka Louis Yeung, 39, of San Dimas, California. The judge ordered him to pay $9.6 million in restitution along with forfeiting a San Dimas property that was purchased with proceeds of the scheme.
On March 30, Yeung pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and four counts of bank fraud.
As part of his guilty plea, Yeung, a former vice president of Eastern Tools & Equipment Inc., of Ontario, California, admitted that he and his co-conspirators defrauded East West Bank. They did this by making misrepresentations about Eastern Tools’ accounts and its financial statements to get bank loans, according to officials.
The conspirators created numerous shell corporations to act as purported suppliers and retailers doing business with Eastern Tools, when, in reality, these shell corporations were entirely under the control of Yeung and existed for the sole purpose of creating the illusion of such business, he admitted, according to authorities.
Yeung also admitted that the fictitious companies allowed Yeung and other conspirators to falsely inflate Eastern Tools’ accounts.
Yeung said that in order to further the scheme, he and others opened post office boxes, phone accounts and email accounts purportedly associated with the shell retail companies, and gave the information to East West Bank auditors. This was done to promote the illusion that these shell customers were independent entities, according to officials.
Eastern Tools defaulted on the loan after East West Bank discovered the fraud, causing more than $9 million in losses to the bank, Yeung admitted.