The former owner of a Jefferson City construction company was indicted by a federal grand jury on bank fraud charges last week.
Anthony Adrian, 59, was arrested Tuesday in Cole County by the Missouri Highway Patrol, according to officials with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Missouri. He made his initial court appearance Wednesday.
In July 2014, Adrian was the owner and president of J.C. Industries, a construction company that was based in Jefferson City, according to court documents.
JCI had entered into a contract with the Columbia Public School District to build a kitchen addition to Lange Middle School.
In August 2014, Adrian signed a commercial loan agreement with Hawthorn Bank for a loan of more than $1.3 million to finance the project at Lange. Adrian was required to submit loan advance forms to support these requests, and he allegedly submitted fraudulent job cost to date reports to justify his request for loan proceeds.
From August 2014 to January 2015, Adrian is believed to have devised and executed a scheme to defraud Hawthorn.
The object of the scheme was for Adrian to use a "substantial" proportion of his ill-gotten funds to pay subcontractors for work they performed in prior jobs, rather than using the money for its intended purpose - building the kitchen addition at Lange.
Adrian allegedly filed reports claiming the Lange project was proceeding on or near budget - when he actually had used much of the money for unrelated construction projects.
By November 2014, Adrian had expended all of the construction loan proceeds and had insufficient funds to complete the Lange project.
JCI went out of business in early 2015 leaving major projects unfinished - including the Lange project and a sewer upgrade project at the U.S. 50/Lafayette Street interchange in Jefferson City, according to previous News Tribune reports.
JCI, founded in 1978, had performed building services such as commercial buildings, schools, churches, roads and bridges, and water and sewer projects, including notable projects like the Jefferson City Animal Shelter construction, Pioneer Trail Elementary School construction and 2008 Adkins Stadium renovation.