Jeffrey Bivens, Washougal’s former finance director and a licensed tax attorney, was sentenced Nov. 20 to three months in federal prison — finally resolving the charges he pleaded guilty to more than four years ago.
Bivens, 38, pleaded guilty Oct. 20, 2010, to one count of making materially false statements to the Small Business Administration and Wachovia Bank.
On Nov. 20, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin H. Settle sentenced Bivens to three months in federal prison and three years of supervised release. Bivens was also ordered to pay $427,015 in restitution — a portion of the $1.7 million loss associated with a bank and business administration loan.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons will notify Bivens of his surrender date, which will come no sooner than January, according to sentencing documents filed Monday.
The charges followed Bivens’ role in the sale of a Longview-based disaster restoration company in May 2007. Bivens represented business owner Donald Chill in the sale of his company, Charles Prescott Restoration, according to court documents.
Bivens provided Wachovia Bank with an inaccurate sale price of the business. As a result, the bank agreed to a loan of $2 million, which was guaranteed by the Small Business Administration, to the purchaser, according to court documents.
Bivens failed to disclose information to the bank and the Small Business Administration, and he helped engineer a secret second closing, which he and others concealed from the bank.
“It is unlikely that any of the schemers (except Chill) believed they were actually cheating the bank with their actions. It is also unlikely that any of them understood, as they cooked their scheme, that they were committing multiple felonies,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote in the sentencing documents. “It is beyond any doubt, however, that they all knowingly, deliberately, carefully and methodically lied to the bank to get the loan needed to complete the transaction.”
“This case and conduct should be a clarion call to attorneys and brokers, in Washington and elsewhere, that they must cut square corners when dealing with a federally insured financial institution,” the office wrote.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office argued it would be “perfectly appropriate” to make an example of Bivens.
With no criminal history, Bivens was facing a guideline sentence range of 37 to 46 months in custody. The U.S. Attorney’s Office agreed with the U.S. Probation Office’s recommended sentence of 24 months, according to the sentencing documents.
Instead, Bivens was sentenced to three months. In rendering the sentence, the judge said he felt Bivens was the least culpable of the defendants involved in the conspiracy, according to Emily Langlie, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The investigation into all of those involved in the conspiracy is ongoing, Langlie said.
Bivens was originally scheduled to be sentenced May 23, 2011. That date was changed at least 10 times in the years that followed due to health matters with Bivens’ attorney, a cancer diagnosis for the assistant U.S. attorney on the case, scheduling conflicts and additional investigating in the case.
In January 2011, Bivens filed a permanent resignation from the Washington State Bar Association in lieu of disbarment.
