TOLEDO -- The man responsible for the failure of the former Oakwood Deposit Bank will spend four less years in prison because of his cooperation with the government and information he provided to help prosecute other cases.
Mark Steven Miller, 52, was given a break on his 14-year prison term Monday by the same judge who handed down Miller's original sentence in 2003. He was convicted of embezzling nearly $49 million from the Oakwood bank between 1993 and 2002, funneling most of the money to invest in gambling boats in South Carolina and Florida.
U.S. District Judge David Katz reduced Miller's sentence for providing information that led to the conviction of gambling boat operators Sam and Marilyn Gray. Sam Gray was sentenced in February to 111/2 years in prison for tax fraud, mail fraud, money laundering and receiving embezzled money. His wife was sentenced to 31/2 years in prison for failing to pay employee taxes and mail fraud.
Miller, who had been the Oakwood Deposit Bank's chief executive officer, was arrested in February 2002 on money laundering and embezzlement charges, convictions on which could have sent him to prison for up to 50 years.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized and closed the Oakwood bank and its nearby Grover Hill branch shortly after Miller's arrest. The bank later reopened as the State Bank and Trust Co.
The Oakwood Deposit Bank had been in operation since 1905 and served the town's nearly 700 people.
At the time of the collapse, the Oakwood bank had $102 million in deposits, of which $9 million was uninsured (over the $100,000 insured by the FDIC). Some of the public entities that lost money were the village of Oakwood, Wayne Trace Local Schools, Paulding County Hospital and Oakwood United Methodist Church.
Authorities originally arrested Miller after federal and state bank examiners investigating a check-kiting scheme found other discrepancies in the bank's records.