FOUNDED on “Christian principles” in 2000 in an Atlanta suburb, Integrity Bank used the motto “In God We Trust”. It gave customers free Bibles, and employees prayed together at meetings.
Integrity Bank was run on 'godly principles' - and bribes
But the Almighty proved entirely untrustworthy, and the bank collapsed at the height of the recession in August 2008.
According to this report, when government regulators shut down Integrity, the bank was seen as just another failed lender that had overvalued the real estate market and collapsed.
But a federal indictment unsealed on yesterday accused two former Vice Presidents of hastening its downfall by selling fraudulent loans to a hotel developer in exchange for bribes.
The two executives, Douglas Ballard and Joseph Todd Foster, were charged with conspiracy, insider trading and bank fraud, according to the indictment. Ballard was also charged with bribery.
The developer, Guy Mitchell, who received $80 million in loans, was charged with conspiracy and bribery.
In announcing the indictment, the United States attorney Sally Quillian Yates said Ballard and Foster had not lived up to the bank’s name or mission.
A number of banks have suffered from the plummeting real estate market, but this bank was robbed from the inside.
Ballard, 40, and Foster, 42, will be arraigned at a later date. Mitchell, 50, pleaded not guilty at a federal courthouse in Atlanta.
The bank’s founder, Steven M Skow, a Lutheran, said it gave away ten percent of annual profits to churches and faith-based charities, donating $1.7 million in 2007. Mr Skow said it did not discriminate against non-Christians. He added:
We weren’t selling religion. We just managed the bank on godly principles, like the golden rule.
Skow, who left the bank in 2007 and was not implicated in the indictment, said he knew nothing about the activities at the heart of the indictment. He said he had lost $22 million in stock when the bank failed.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
May 8th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
More fake Christians. True Christians ™ would never have done this.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
@mikespeir. You got it, mike. There is no way “true christians” would have done this. You know what? I think they were militant atheists and aggressive secularists out to undermine the truth of christianity. You know it make sense.
May 8th, 2010 at 8:28 pm
I actually live here in GA with these shysters and liars, in fact, I live less than 90 miles from Atlanta. This state is infested with “christianist” scum that constantly lie to their supporters who will follow them into a tar pit so long as they say that they are “christians,” have family values, hate the gays, immigrants, and people of color. Once these “christians” get into positions of power, they waste no time taking advantage of their position(s.)
Glenn Richardson, a conservative/republican, was Speaker in the GA General Assembly and ended up retiring because he had had an affair with a lobbyist whose energy company needed a bill passed that would be in its’ favor. Even when it was discovered that Richardson had done this, many of the members of his own party and its’ supporters were reluctant to chastise him for it. His ex-wife scheduled an interview with an Atlanta news station and revealed just how corrput he was, personally and professionally. Nathan Deal, ex-U.S. Congressman who was under investigation by Congress for wrongdoing, is running for governor and is leading in the republican primary poll.
You cannot make this stuff up. The majority of the people here are so focused on their brand of “christianity,” hating everyone else, trying to control the bodies of others, and praising guns until they don’t have the sense to look behind the facades of these shysters and stop placing their confidence in them. They keep getting f(uked over, again and again, but they are incapable of learning from it. My attitude and position toward their madness is to make sure that I keep my money out of their hands, my votes for other candidates, and my eyes wide open to protect myself from their evil. Maybe after they trash the state enough, the majority will wake up and throw them out of their positions of power, but I’m not holding my breath because in GA, it really is a dog eat dog world mindset that prevails.
May 8th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Hence one of the reasons I’ll never patronize “faith based” businesses. I don’t trust them for a second.
May 9th, 2010 at 1:57 am
Most Christian businessmen (sorry racketeers) are conmen and crooks like Falwell, Hinn, Robertson, Graham, Swaggert, and Copeland I could go on so this is really no surprise
May 9th, 2010 at 6:14 am
Every day, in Boise, Idaho, USA, I drive by businesses with signs that advertise themselves as christian credit unions. Well, as silly as US laws are, I know if I went in to apply for a loan, and they inquired my religion, I could bitch slap them with a nearly limitless lawsuit. More than negligent wrongful death.
So I am left wondering what the fuck these people are thinking.
And it comes as no surprise that their chairmanship is a bunch of greedy theives. Isn’t that what religion has always done?
NeoWolfe
May 9th, 2010 at 7:00 am
Top level xianity is a business run by people who were once religious but can still talk the talk.
We’ve seen it for years with televangelists and more recently with G A Rekers spending a five-figure sum on taking a rentboy away to Europe so he can tup him away from prying eyes.
http://justwilliam1959.files.w.....banker.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_uT7N.....0/Bank.jpg
I didn’t know this but some years ago the Cooperative bank told Birdshit Green’s Xian Voice to take their money elsewhere. Right, where do I sign up?
http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/coop.html
May 9th, 2010 at 9:27 am
@majii. Great post. Loved it. Probably because it ties in with my occasional visits to the USA. I just started reading “The Greatest Show on Earth” by Richard Dawkins. This book, more entertaining than most novels I have read, is focussed on “the incontrovertible evidence that underpins evolution.” I offered to send a copy to a dumbfuck fundie in Texas but she didn’t want to know. “We all know about Dawkins,” she writes.
I wondered if she knew that George W. Bush signed the death warrent about once a fortnight through his six years I governor. (I loathe that piece of crap Bush and his poodle Holy Tony Bliar.) In Texas alone 35 condemned people have been exonerated since DNA evidence became available. How many have been murdered at the whim of that wonderful christian Bush. (I got this from the start of Dawkins’ book.)
Great to hear from you guys in the USA.
May 9th, 2010 at 10:21 am
If you think about it, people who will swallow the tall tale that is Christianity are obviously going to be vulnerable to deception.
Likewise, the unquestioning loyalty of church members to their religious leaders makes them ripe for exploitation.
May 9th, 2010 at 11:15 am
@BrogaDidn’t George Bush once sit and laugh and do impressions of a female Death Row prisoner he knew he wasn’t going to pardon but, pretended up until the last moment pretended he would
May 9th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
This story should convince all you doubters, once and for all, of the superiority of christian morals; so let’s just have no more debate, shall we?
As for bush; gentlemen please – i’ve just had breakfast and now you’ve made me nauseous
May 10th, 2010 at 7:55 am
Broga said:
“I loathe that piece of crap Bush and his poodle Holy Tony Bliar.”
Since I spell like a kindergartener, I’ll refrain from reminding you of who the prime minister of the the UK is, (was) and how it’s spelled. Truthfully, I always liked T. Blair, he seemed like a straight talker. But, I obviously digress.
You are ever so correct. Scott Peterson was convicted of capital murder without a murder scene, or a murder weapon, no eye witnesses, and while mobsters go free because they intimidate potential witnesses, Scott Peterson sits on death row because he appeared to “act guilty”.
The designers of our legal system obviously believed that it is better that a bad guy go free than put an innocent man in prison. Yet, almost on a monthly basis, new technology frees a man unjustly imprisoned for decades. So, one is obviously left with the question, how many innocent men have been hanged or fried in the chair who were innocent of the crime of which they were accused?
I try to be honest with myself, and I emotionally melt when some little kid is taking his first steps or expressing his first words, but if I believed that some pervert snuffed their life so he could achieve an orgasm, I would split his brain with an axe. It all gets kinda grey and fuzzy doesn’t it? Such is the burden of being human.
NeoWolfe
May 10th, 2010 at 8:57 am
NeoWolfe: Broga’s misspelling of Blair’s name was intentional. Many Brit’s, myself included, took to calling him B(liar) because he LIED so convincingly (in the beginning) about the motives for the Iraq war.
May 12th, 2010 at 7:06 am
BDuke,
I feel the sting of the lie that Blair and Bush told the world, but I also remember a truth, “if instead of two thousand lives, if they could have ended twenty thousand lives, they gladly would have.” And you know it to be true, and you publish that idea nearly on a daily basis.
But, the US and the UK ignored the warning from Germany and France that Hussein was the cork in a champagne bottle containing civil war between the Sunnis and the Shiites. And Brits and Americans died because they were wrong. We think we are so smart. We forceably give them a vote, and who do they elect? Their imams. Fuck Bush. The ultimate asshole who has ever existed.
NeoWolfe