U.S. Attorney Scott Brady says the former president of an Ohio healthcare management company has pleaded guilty to bank fraud in a case that targeted Indiana-based S&T Bank and Cincinnati-based First Financial Bank. S&T’s losses totaled $59,240,000.
67-year-old Harold Sosna of Cincinnati ran what is referred to as a “check kiting” scheme to scam the banks out of cash using the time between a check’s having been written and the actual receipt of the funds. FBI Pittsburgh Special Agent in Charge Michael Christman said “He tried to game the system by floating money around to make it look like his accounts had millions of dollars in them.”
Sosna was the president of Premier Healthcare Management, located in Blue Ash, Ohio. The company ran nine nursing care facilities in Ohio and had various corporate entities, each with its own bank accounts. In a four-day period in May of this year, Sosna wrote 203 checks between S&T and First Financial accounts, channeling $118 million in phantom money.
Sosna will be sentenced in February. The maximum penalty would be thirty years in prison, a fine of $1 million, or both.
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