Lack gets nine-plus year sentence, faces additional 11
Convicted former contractor, 53-year-old David Lack was slapped nine years and eight months in state prison at his Nov. 6 sentencing, after a jury found him guilty of three counts of grand theft in early August.
Lack was also ordered to pay restitution of $300,000 to Mary Belle Snow, $600,508.74 to Rabobank and more than $1.2 million to the Bank of Santa Barbara.
The case stems back to 2007, when Lack, then owner of Lack Construction received a $700,000 loan from the Bank of Santa Barbara and a $500,000 loan from Rabobank. Lack defaulted on both loans and tried to shake the debt in bankruptcy in 2010.
Originally, Lack provided the banks with false financial statements to get the loans. In the financial statements, Lack said he owned a house free-and-clear worth $1.3 million and a piece of land in Texas worth $500,000.
Through the investigation, it was found that Lack sought the loans to increase the bonding capacity of his construction company, which would allow him to get more government jobs and bid more competitively on others against companies with lower bonding capacity, according to court documents.
“In this case the victims are not only the two banks whose money was stolen but also the legitimate construction companies in our community who were bidding for the same jobs Lack Construction was bidding on, but lost out on those jobs because of Mr. Lack’s criminal activities,” District Attorney Joyce Dudley said. “The prosecution of businesses that commit crimes in our community in order to obtain an unfair advantage in the marketplace is and will continue to be a focus of prosecution in our white collar fraud unit …”
In July, Lack was charged in an additional felony complaint with tax evasion, failure to pay unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation fraud, contracting while his contractors license was suspended and grand theft. According to court documents, it’s alleged that Lack committed these crimes while out on bail from the previous case.
Lack faces an additional 11 years and eight months if convicted on those charges. A preliminary hearing on that case is set for Nov. 21.
