FORMER STEVENS FINANCIAL GROUP LAWYER PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY CHARGE

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff of the Criminal Division announced today that James Scott Pope, former in-house counsel to Stevens Financial Group, Inc. (SFG), has pleaded guilty to a one-count criminal information charging him with conspiracy to obstruct a national bank examination being conducted by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

Pope entered the plea yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.

The criminal information charges that Pope, 41, conspired with others to obstruct the OCC’s monitoring of the activities of the Sinclair National Bank, including the proposed acquisition of the bank by SFG, a Missouri financial services firm. SFG filed for bankruptcy in 2001, leaving about 2,900 investors with more than $60 million in losses.

According to the criminal information, Pope and his co-conspirators agreed to backdate a document falsely representing that SNB’s chairman and CEO had agreed to sell an entity whose debt to SFG raised issues of potential self-dealing by SNB’s chairman. Because of the allegedly false information, the OCC expended significant resources monitoring the activities of SNB, and approximately 18 months after SNB’s acquisition, determined that the bank was critically undercapitalized. OCC later closed the bank.

The conspiracy charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Sentencing will be set at a later date. Pope pleaded guilty on April 25 to two counts of state charges of submitting false or misleading documents to investigators.

The case, which is part of an ongoing investigation into SFG and SNB, was prosecuted by Fraud Section Trial Attorneys William C. Athanas and Pamela J. Wechsler. The investigation is being handled by the Offices of the Inspectors General of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Department of the Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service -- Criminal Investigation, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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