Albany Man Sentenced to Probation for Conspiracy to Commit Bank Fraud

ALBANY, NEW YORK – Peter D. Amato, age 66, of Albany, was sentenced today to 1 year of probation and to pay a $15,000 fine for conspiracy to commit bank fraud.

The announcement was made by United States Attorney Grant C. Jaquith and James N. Hendricks, Special Agent in Charge of the Albany Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

As part of his guilty plea, Amato admitted that from July 2015 through January 2017, he and a co-conspirator submitted inflated project budgets to M&T Bank as part of loan applications for apartment construction projects in the Towns of Brunswick and Stillwater, New York.  They then used the additional funds that the bank loaned to them for purposes not authorized by the loan agreements.  Amato further admitted that, as part of the scheme, he and his co-conspirator submitted false subcontractor agreements to M&T Bank that substantially overstated the amount of money for which subcontractors had agreed to do work on the projects, but that were consistent with the inflated project budgets Amato and his co-conspirator had provided to the bank. 

This case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard D. Belliss.