Date: February 14, 2022 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov CHICAGO — A federal jury today convicted a Chicago attorney on false statement and tax offenses in connection with funds he received from the failed Washington Federal Bank for Savings. Patrick D. Thompson of Chicago, was found guilty on all seven counts against him, including five counts of willfully filing a false income tax return and two counts of knowingly making a false statement to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Each false statement count is punishable by a maximum sentence of 30 years in federal prison, while each tax count is punishable by up to three years. U.S. District Judge Franklin U. Valderrama set sentencing for July 6, 2022. The conviction was announced by John R. Lausch, Jr., United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Jay N. Lerner, Inspector General of the FDIC's Office of Inspector General; Justin Campbell, Special Agent-in-Charge of IRS Criminal Investigation in Chicago; Emmerson Buie, Jr., Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Field Office of the FBI; Catherine Huber, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Central Region of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Office of Inspector General; Sally Luttrell, Assistant Inspector for Investigations of the Department of the Treasury, Office of Inspector General; and Kathryn B. Richards, Chicago Housing Authority Inspector General. Valuable assistance was provided by the City of Chicago Inspector General's Office. The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michelle Petersen, Brian Netols, and Jeremy Daniel. According to evidence presented at trial, Thompson from 2011 to 2014 received $219,000 from Chicago-based Washington Federal via a purported loan and other unsecured payments. He made one re-payment on the loan but then stopped making payments, and he failed to pay interest on the funds he received. Washington Federal was shut down in 2017 after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency determined it was insolvent and had at least $66 million in nonperforming loans. When the FDIC, as successor in interest to Washington Federal, attempted to obtain repayment from Thompson in 2018, he falsely stated that he owed only $110,000 and that those funds were for home improvement. In reality, Thompson knew he had actually received $219,000 in three separate installments – none of which went towards home improvements – and that $110,000 of it was paid by the bank directly to Thompson's law firm as Thompson's capital contribution. The tax charges stemmed from Thompson falsely representing on five years of income taxes that he was entitled to a mortgage interest deduction for interest payments made on money he received from Washington Federal, even though he knew the loan was not a mortgage loan and he did not make interest payments as reported on those returns.
