United Commercial Bank CEO Thomas Wu and vice presidents Ebrahim Shabudin and Thomas Yu were hit with federal charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission after accepting a whopping $298 million taxpayer bailout for bogus numbers. "They now have the distinction of being the first senior executives of a bank that received federal bailout funds to be criminally charged in connection with a scheme to defraud the government and American taxpayers," notes SF Examiner.

Back in 2009, the now-defunct bank filed for bankruptcy, which made them "the first recipient of TARP funds to fail." Wu's book-cooking could cost to taxpayers as much as "$2.5 billion, not including the lost TARP funds." (Some of you may recall that SF Weekly did a whole cover article about Mr. Wu last December.)

Wu's attorney says that the government is merely looking for someone to blame, and picked his client, going on to say, "Thomas Wu is counting on our justice system to clear his good name."

[SFEx]