Former Madison Resident Sentenced To Prison For Defrauding Banks To Keep Business Afloat

Deirdre M. Daly, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, today announced that WILLIAM LECKEY, 48, of Buffalo, N.Y., formerly of Madison, was sentenced yesterday by U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton in New Haven to 29 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, for engaging in a fraud scheme that victimized financial institutions of more than $1.7 million.

According to court documents and statements made in court, from approximately 2002 until 2012, LECKEY was the President and owner of Anchor Capital Services, Inc. (“ACS”), which provided financing to companies looking to purchase heavy equipment, such as tractor trailer trucks, dump trucks, backhoes and other similar types of equipment.  ACS provided its customers with high interest rate leases, and funded the transactions through lines of credit it had available with various financial institutions.  ACS would draw down on the lines of credit it had with these financial institutions by pledging its lease agreements and the related equipment as collateral.  After each deal was funded by the financial institutions, ACS’s customer would make monthly payments to ACS on the lease, and ACS would use those funds to pay down the line of credit with the bank.

LECKEY and others engaged in a long-running fraud scheme to obtain money from financial institutions to use as operating capital for ACS.  As part of the scheme, LECKEY and others made false representations to the financial institutions that ACS had entered into lease transactions with customers for specified pieces of heavy equipment when, in fact, they knew that no such lease transaction had been conducted or the transaction never transpired after the lease had been signed.  As a result of these false statements, the financial institutions funded these nonexistent transactions in amounts well in excess of $100,000 on a number of occasions.

On one occasion in October 2010, LECKEY created a bogus customer to serve as the purported lessee of the equipment, and proceeded to defraud the financial institution into releasing $150,000 to ACS.

As a result of this scheme, ACS received more than $1.7 million from financial institutions on its letters of credit.

Judge Arterton ordered LECKEY to pay restitution in the amount of $ $1,709,640 to two victim financial institutions.

On August 1, 2013, LECKEY pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud.

This ongoing investigation is being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation Division.  The case is being prosecuted by Senior Litigation Counsel Richard J. Schechter and Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul A. Murphy.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS CONTACT:

U.S. ATTORNEY'S OFFICE
Tom Carson
(203) 821-3722
thomas.carson@usdoj.gov