Ex-bank CEO gets 24 years after falling for crypto scam, causing bank collapse
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A federal judge sentenced a 53-year-old Kansas man to more than 24 years in prison after the former bank CEO abused his trusted position to embezzle $47 million after falling for a cryptocurrency scam that he believed would make him wildly rich.
In a press release, the US Attorney's Office said that Shan Hanes was driven by "greed" when directing bank employees to transfer millions in funds to a sketchy crypto wallet managed by still-unknown third parties behind the so-called "pig butchering" scheme.
Hanes was first targeted by scammers in late 2022, apparently when he got a message from an unidentified co-conspirator on WhatsApp, prosecutors said. After blowing through his own funds seeking promised profits, Hanes stole tens of thousands from a local church, then a local investor club, and finally his daughter's college fund, NBC News reported. Then when all those wells dried up, he started stealing bank funds-all in the false hopes that sending more and more money to the scammers would somehow "unlock the supposed returns" on his crypto investments.