A Marion County man pleaded guilty to five counts of bank fraud.
The U.S. attorney's office says 75-year-old Alfred Cross of Kinmundy will be sentenced on May 9th. Each of the bank fraud counts carries a sentence of up to thirty years in prison.
In pleading guilty, Cross admitted he opened checking accounts and defrauded more than 500-thousand dollars at banks in Carbondale, Mt. Vernon, Benton, Nashville, Greenville and two in Effingham.
Shortly after opening these accounts, Cross deposited checks, ranging from 18-thousand to 148-thousand dollars, on out-of-state bank accounts in the names of businesses he controlled.
Cross admitted he knew there were insufficient funds in the accounts to cover the checks, and before the checks could be returned as non-sufficient funds, he withdrew almost all of the funds he had deposited.
Cross gave some of the money to his relatives and used the remainder to pay for personal expenses.
Cross conducted this fraud scheme from 2011 through 2015.