Federal prosecutors began laying out their fraud case Tuesday against First NBC Bank founder Ashton Ryan, calling as witnesses former executives who questioned the decisions to make massive loans to a small cadre of borrowers in the years before the bank’s 2017 collapse.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Payne told jurors during his opening statement that Ryan and his co-defendant, bank vice president Fred Beebe, were part of a broad conspiracy that played out over several years.
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