The former chief marketing officer at the now-defunct Mirae Bank was sentenced on May 20 to 70 months in federal prison for his role in a scheme that caused the Koreatown-based lender to issue more than $15 million in fraudulent loans.

The 60-year-old defendant, Ataollah Aminpour, of Beverly Hills, was also ordered to pay $7.5 million in restitution. Judge Dale S. Fischer remanded Aminpour, who had been on bond, into federal custody to begin serving his sentence immediately.

Aminpour, who is also known as “John” and “Johnny” Aminpour, pleaded guilty in December 2017 to one felony count of making a false statement to a financial institution. According to court documents, Aminpour portrayed himself as a successful businessman who could help people obtain financing for gas station and car wash businesses with little or no down payment. In some instances, Aminpour would identify a business for the borrower to purchase, and would negotiate the sales price. On the commercial loan applications that he submitted to the bank on behalf of the borrower, Aminpour would overstate the actual purchase price of the business, thereby causing the bank to issue inflated loan amounts that were not fully secured.

From 2005 to 2007, Aminpour, along with other participants in the scheme, submitted fraudulent commercial loan applications to Mirae Bank, a federally insured financial institution. In his role as a senior bank executive, Aminpour submitted and knowingly caused others to submit false information not only about the true purchase price of the businesses, but also the assets of the borrowers and the finances of the businesses being purchased. Aminpour additionally allowed borrowers to circumvent the bank’s down payment requirements by arranging for money to be transferred into escrow accounts so it would falsely appear to Mirae Bank that the borrowers were making large down payments. As a result, borrowers were able to acquire businesses with little to no money down, with Aminpour earning commissions and in some instances, misappropriating the excess loan proceeds for himself.

For example, Aminpour made false statements to Mirae Bank in an application for a $4.2 million loan in connection with the purchase of a car wash in Maywood. When he pleaded guilty, Aminpour admitted that he falsely stated that the purchase price of the car wash was $6.65 million on the application, when the real purchase price was $3.25 million.

In his plea agreement, Aminpour further admitted that his scheme involved false statements in six loan applications submitted between November 2005 and February 2007 for loans totaling $16.7 million, and that losses on those loans exceeded $7.5 million.

In addition to the loans charged as part of the fraud in this case, Aminpour referred approximately $150 million in loans to Mirae Bank, and the losses on those loans played a significant role in the bank’s collapse in 2009, according to court documents. After the bank’s failure, the FDIC took over Mirae Bank as its receiver. FDIC and Wilshire Bank, which acquired Mirae Bank’s assets from FDIC, suffered more than $33 million in losses combined on the Aminpour-referred loans. Wilshire Bank was subsequently acquired by Bank of Hope.