Adam Teague, former senior vice president of now defunct Appalachian Community Bank in Ellijay, Ga., was sentenced to serve more than five years in federal prison for conspiring to defraud the bank, the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said this week.

“Bank fraud is a critical problem throughout the United States, but it has hit Georgia especially hard,” said Sally Quillian Yates, United States attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.  

He explained, “Our state has led the nation in bank failures since 2008, with 85 banks failing – including this one.  This bank was robbed from the inside, not by a bandit carrying a gun, but a bank officer carrying a pen.”