In the Wichita courtroom, Hanes offered his only public reflection on the bank collapse. Wearing a gray suit, he walked up to the lectern, glancing nervously at his former friends in the gallery. “I’m sorry,” he told the judge. Until the very end, he explained, he thought he was involved in a legitimate business deal. In January 2024, he told the court, he made a futile attempt to recoup the lost money, flying to Perth, Australia, where some of his nonexistent business partners had supposedly been based. He was in touch with them until the moment he landed at the airport. But no bailout materialized. It was only then, months after the bank shuttered, that he accepted he had been tricked. “I’ll forever struggle understanding how I was duped,” Hanes said. “I should have caught it, but I didn’t.”
After Hanes finished speaking, Judge Broomes rocked backward in his chair and turned to face the shareholders. “The best thing for you is to forgive this man,” he said. “Leave matters of retribution to me. That’s my job, and I’ll see that it’s done.” He sentenced Hanes to 24 years and 5 months in prison, a punishment even greater than federal prosecutors had requested. A chorus of yeses echoed from the shareholders.
Hanes’s shoulders slumped. As two U.S. marshals approached him, he undid his tie, slipped off his suit jacket and emptied his pockets. Behind him, the shareholders went quiet. Hanes’ sister and one of his daughters clung to each other, their sobs breaking the silence. Hanes looked at them once, quickly, before the marshals handcuffed him and led him out of the room.
One day last October, Tucker got a call from an investigator at the F.B.I. It was good news: Federal officials had recovered $8 million of the stolen funds, which had been hidden in an account full of Tether, a popular cryptocurrency. The stash was a small fraction of what Hanes stole, but it would be enough to reimburse the shareholders for nearly all the money they had invested in the bank.
The jubilation Tucker might have expected to feel was tempered by sadness. 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 and then said, “Oh, my.” He died a week later.
