A former branch manager and vice president of Pacific Premier Bank (Irvine, Calif.) would be barred from ever working again in a federally insured financial institution and required to pay restitution of $18,700 under an order sought by the Federal Reserve Board, the Fed said in a notice released Thursday.
The Fed, in the Oct. 7 notice, said that Mai N. Ly-Vu “engaged in unsafe or unsound practices and breaches of fiduciary duty” by failing to disclose and making false or misleading statements to the bank regarding her personal financial interests in $250,000 worth of credit extensions to companies owned by her family members, one for which Ly-Vu was identified as an executive officer.
The Fed said that through this activity, Ly-Vu received a financial gain and was unjustly enriched in the amount of at least $18,700. The bank also suffered a financial loss of at least $56,930 “or other damage and reputational harm.”
The Fed notice says that Ly-Vu, who concealed her connections to the borrowers, also received at least $18,700 in payments from one company for which she had been listed as the chief financial officer. The notice states that Ly-Vu violated her bank’s code of conduct, which, among other things, prohibited conflicts of interest, required disclosure of any conflicts or appearance of conflicts, and required specific board consideration “whenever a potential conflict of interest is present in any proposed loan or other transaction or relationship the [Bank] may enter into[.]”
Ly-Vu was hired by the Pacific Premier Bank about Dec. 18, 2014, as a vice president and branch manager of its Tustin, Calif., branch in connection with the bank’s acquisition of Independence Bank, her former employer.