In the courtroom of Wichita, Hanes offered his only public reflection on the bank's collapse. He wore a gray suit and walked to the desk and looked nervously at his former friends in the gallery. “I'm sorry,” he told the judge. Until the end, he explained, he thought he was involved in a legitimate business deal. In January 2024 he told the court that he made a pointless attempt to earn back the lost money, flying to Perth, Australia, where some of his non -existent business partners were supposedly based. He was in contact with them until he landed at the airport. But no rescue machines has been released. Only then, months after the bank was closed did he accept that he had been misled. “I will struggle forever and understand how I was duped,” said Hanes. “I should have catched it, but I didn't.”
After Hanes finished speaking, judge brooms fluctuated back in his chair and turned to the shareholders. “The best for you is to forgive this man,” he said. “Leave me the matters of retribution. That is my job, and I will see that it is ready. “He sentenced Hanes to 24 years and 5 months in prison, a punishment that was even greater than federal prosecutors had requested. A choir of yes ultrasound from the shareholders.
The shoulders of Hanes fell in bag. When two American Marshals approached him, he loosened his tie, slipped his packing jacket and emptied his pockets. Behind him the shareholders became silent. The sister of Hanes and one of his daughters clung together, their sobbing break the silence. Hanes looked at them once, quickly before the Marshals fascinated him and led him out of the room.
One day last October, Tucker received a phone call from a researcher at the FBI It was good news: federal officials had reclaimed $ 8 million from the stolen funds, which were hidden in a account full of Tether, a popular cryptocurrency. The stock was a small group of what Hanes Stal, but it would be enough to reimburse the shareholders for almost all the money they had invested in the bank.
The jubilant Tucker might have expected that he was tempered by sorrow. His father had been in and out of the hospital and a doctor warned that he had only days left to live. That night Tucker went to his father's hospital room and shared what he had heard. Bill Tucker blinked a few times with his eyes and then said, “Oh, mine.” He died a week later.
