Trust But Verify (Gwen Moritz Editor's Note)
Misplaced trust is a common theme in the fraud cases I’ve observed over the past two decades, as is the failure to make simple, routine checks. read more >
Misplaced trust is a common theme in the fraud cases I’ve observed over the past two decades, as is the failure to make simple, routine checks. read more >
Randy Dennis’ firm, DD&F Consulting Group of Little Rock, has been involved in something that’s even more unusual than a bank acquisition in 2020: a brand-new bank charter. read more >
Oh, to have the power to subpoena people who could answer my burning questions and then force them to speak under oath! Some of the questions I still want answered date back a decade and more: read more >
Nothing I’ve learned from nearly 19 years as editor of Arkansas Business resonates more than this: Wealth and the appearance of wealth are two different things. And yet we fall for appearances over and over again. read more >
There are a lot of moving parts to the acquisition equation in the pending merger of Pinnacle Bank of Rogers and Central Bank of Little Rock. read more >
A new spiral is taking shape in the Lex Golden-Allied Bank-Walter Quinn nexus. read more >
It's easy in hindsight to spot errors. I don’t know enough about auditing to know whether BKD’s auditors were incompetent. I do know from hard experience that errors often seem obvious in hindsight, and while they may be the result of lazy technique, some errors are virtually unavoidable. read more >
Accounting firm BKD LLP agreed to pay the FDIC $4 million to settle a federal lawsuit tied to the 2010 failure of First Southern Bank of Batesville. read more >
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. last week settled its lawsuit against the accounting firm BKD LLP, just days before the trial was scheduled to begin in U.S. District Court in Little Rock. read more >
In a civil trial scheduled to start next Monday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will blame regional accounting firm BKD LLC for failing to uncover the massive fraud that led to the 2010 failure of First Southern Bank of Batesville. read more >
A typical organization — business, nonprofit, government, whatever — loses 5 percent of revenue to fraud in any given year. read more >
A fractious relationship between Hildene Capital Management and Acme Holding Co. was evident in the April 2-3 courtroom interaction between Rex Terry of Fort Smith, Hildene’s local counsel, and Lex and Alex Golden of Little Rock. read more >
The accounting firm BKD LLC is blaming the collapse of First Southern Bank in Batesville on the failure of bank officers and officials to detect former Little Rock attorney Kevin Lewis’ fraud. read more >
Thanks to the fraud of convicted former Little Rock attorney Kevin Lewis, Woody Castleberry will never work in banking again. Castleberry told us last week that his settlement with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was finally approved. He won’t have to pay a penalty, but he agreed never to be involved in banking again. read more >
More than two-and-a-half years after former Little Rock attorney Kevin Lewis was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for bank fraud, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. continues to clean up his mess. read more >
The parent company of Allied Bank of Mulberry was steered into bankruptcy to stave off a possible takeover by a fellow lender. The defensive move buys Acme Holding Co. more time to work out a solution with Chambers Bank of Danville and other creditors. read more >
Kevin Lewis wasn’t a high-profile guy until he started attracting lawsuits and the attention of federal investigators in connection with allegations of bank fraud involving multiple lenders. The day-to-day whereabouts of Lewis might be as enigmatic as the man, but Andy Myers can tell you where Lewis was on Feb. 3. That’s the day he caught up with Lewis at his parents’ home in Searcy. read more >
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is blaming BKD LLP, the Springfield, Mo., accounting firm with a large Little Rock office, for allowing Kevin Lewis’ fraud to go undetected long enough to destroy First Southern Bank of Batesville. read more >
Roach Exchange Holdings LLC, led by Gary Roach, bought Kanis Plaza at 10809 Kanis Road. The deal is backed with a 20-year loan of $1.24 million from BancorpSouth Bank of Tupelo, Miss. read more >
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Little Rock last month closed a case involving the seizure of a nearly $53,000 arctic white Mercedes-Benz that Kevin Lewis gave his father, Harold Lewis, in April 2010. read more >
