Dennis Smiley, as a trustee of the Jones Trust of Springdale, participated in the March 2013 groundbreaking ceremony for the Webb Memorial Children Park on the campus of the Center for Nonprofits at St. Mary's in Rogers. Smiley resigned from the trust's board last month.
Whispers admitted it was going out on a limb by predicting in April that a plea deal for Arvest Bank’s former Benton County market president Dennis Smiley Jr. was likely within a couple of weeks.
We, and our sources, were clearly too optimistic.
This time we won’t predict a timetable. But we are assured that a plea deal with federal prosecutors is still in the works, held up primarily by objections from a couple of victims.
Smiley’s victims were 20 banks doing business in northwest Arkansas who loaned him an aggregate of about $4 million, mainly secured — over and over again — by his Arvest retirement fund that was worth about $550,000.
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