According to recently filed documents in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, district judge Paul S. Diamond, Jr., has scheduled the sentencing of John S. Tomberlin, a defendant in the Equipment Finance Inc. loan fraud case, for November 22, 2011. Tomberlin pleaded guilty on August 15 to conspiracy, mail fraud affecting a financial institution, conspiracy to commit money laundering and money laundering of the indictment. He faced 15 counts in the EFI case.

He also pleaded guilty, in a separate case, to one count of fraudulent participation in loan proceeds arising out of his aiding and abetting the receipt of a portion of the proceeds of loans by an employee of the lender, Troy Bank and Trust, formerly known as The Peoples Bank of Coffee County.

Tomberlin faces the maximum of 85 years’ imprisonment, a five-year period of supervised release, a $4,836,028 fine, a $500 special assessment, plus full restitution. His bail conditions were amended to add that he can be on home confinement with electronic monitoring until his sentencing.

Court documents note that Tomberlin was a part-owner of South Central Agency (SCA), a business located in Andalusia, AL, that specialized in insurance, mortgages and real estate. In May 2001, co-defendant John Wiley Spann recruited defendant Tomberlin to sign EFI loan paperwork that listed Tomberlin as the purported borrower for a loan in the amount of approximately $124,000. In fact, Spann paid Tomberlin approximately $10,000 to sign the false EFI loan documents claiming that Tomberlin purchased logging equipment that the defendant did not purchase. Tomberlin also assisted Spann in extracting over $1 million from EFI’s insurance escrow account to use in the fraudulent scheme. Spann recruited Harold W. Young and Tomberlin to assist him with this part of the scheme.

As previously reported on monitordaily, sentencing of co-defendants Joseph M. Braas, Michael J. Schlager, Mary C. Stankiewicz is also scheduled for November 2011.

The trial for defendants Misty L. Kroesen and her husband Curtis A. Kroesen, former EFI employees, and Young is scheduled for October 25, 2011.

In July federal prosecutor Nancy E. Potts asked a federal judge to remove attorney Donald R. Jones Jr., counsel for Young, due to conflict of interest because Jones also had represented Tomberlin while the case was under investigation.

Braas, Schlager, Stankiewicz, the Kroesens, all from Lancaster County, and Spann, Tomberlin and Young, all from Alabama, were indicted with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and mail fraud, all arising out a massive, sophisticated loan fraud scheme that resulted in a loss of $53 million.

It is alleged in the indictment that as far back as 2001, before EFI was acquired by Sterling, the defendants were engaging in a systematic fraud at EFI. They are charged with colluding in a pervasive scheme to steal money by looting the accounts of EFI and falsifying EFI’s books, from 2001 through 2007.

Previously on monitordaily: EFI Fraud Prosecutor Requests Removal of Defense Attorney, published July 29, 2011