NEW ORLEANS – New Orleans attorney Gregory Joseph St. Angelo, former general counsel at a failed First NBC Bank who pleaded guilty earlier this month to a bank fraud charge, was indefinitely suspended following a Louisiana Supreme Court order.
In its single-page order filed July 22, the Supreme Court suspended St. Angelo's law license until further court order following an office of disciplinary counsel petition for interim suspension. The court also ordered "that necessary proceedings be instituted."
Earlier this month, St. Angelo pleaded guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to commit bank fraud after reaching a plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The U.S. Attorney's Office filed a 22-page factual basis in connection with the plea agreement in which St. Angelo stipulated to conspiring with other former bank executives to falsify documents and receive loans from that bank and then make it look like those loans were repaid when they were not.
St. Angelo is scheduled to be sentenced in October.
The collapse of First NBC in 2017 was detailed in a report posted on nola.com.
The bank's failure, called "the biggest U.S. bank collapse since the 2008 financial crisis" in a posting on biglawbusiness.com, left the bank under FDIC receivership, which directed all First NBC transactional deposits to Whitney Bank, based in Gulfport, Mississippi.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a criminal bill of information against St. Angelo in March as part of its case against the former general counsel for alleged conspiracy to commit bank fraud.
"By the time First NBC Bank failed in late April 2017, the balances on loans issued to St. Angelo and certain entities totaled approximately $46.7 million, and First NBC Bank had also paid St. Angelo approximately $9.6 million for purported tax credit investments," the criminal bill of information said.
In a lawsuit filed in May in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District Louisiana, the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors is seeking unspecified monetary damages from St. Angelo and others as part of First NBC 's bankruptcy proceedings.