Shan Hanes, the former CEO of Heartland Tri-State Bank in Elkhart, Kansas, has been sentenced to more than 24 years in prison for embezzling $47 million from the bank and sending it to cryptocurrency wallets controlled by scammers who tricked him with a “Pig butchering” scheme.
NBC News reports that Shan Hanes, the former CEO of Heartland Tri-State Bank in Elkhart, Kansas, has been sentenced to 293 months in prison for looting the bank of $47 million in a cryptocurrency scam known as “pig butchering.” The massive embezzlement led to the collapse and FDIC takeover of the small Kansas bank, one of only five U.S. banks that failed in 2023.
Hanes, 53, fell victim to the scam in late 2022, which convinced him to invest in supposedly legitimate virtual currency investment opportunities. The scammers, whose true identities remain unknown, communicated with Hanes through the messaging app WhatsApp. Initially using personal funds to buy cryptocurrency, Hanes soon began stealing from various sources, including a local church, an investment club, his daughter’s college savings account, and the bank itself.
Between May and July 2023, Hanes directed 11 wire transfers from Heartland Tri-State Bank to accounts controlled by the scammers, totaling $47 million. He made misrepresentations to bank employees and circumvented the bank’s wire policy and daily limits to execute the transfers. Prosecutors noted that the series of wire transfers followed a common pattern in pig-butchering schemes, where initial investments are followed by requests for additional funds to secure or unfreeze the earlier transfers.
$47 million and on 24 years in prison? He should spend the rest of his life in prison.