MADISON, WI - A year ago, Brian Cason was a successful entrepreneur whose real-estate development and construction businesses employed 50 people in the Madison area. A planned manufacturing plant was to employ 75 more. "We were doing extremely well, " the hard-charging businessman from Verona said as he guided his Ford Expedition on a tour of some of the homes, condominiums and commercial buildings that his company, Alta Construction, has built around Dane County in the past six years. Today, Cason, 41, teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, and two multi-family housing projects have been mothballed. He 's been forced to lay off all but one of his employees, and his Verona home is in foreclosure. All that remains of the planned manufacturing plant is a mound of dirt and debt.
But his story isn 't just another tale of risky loans gone bad. In fact, Cason contends in a response to a lawsuit by his lender, he consistently met his payments to the bank, Wisconsin Community Bank. The problem came, he said, when the bank broke its promise to fund the plant, his most ambitious project, and then called the loans on his other projects. Complicating matters, Cason alleges, as the manufacturing plant got closer to reality, bank vice president Scott Huonker instructed him to falsify loan requests to make it appear money sought for the plant would instead go toward the housing projects. Huonker and his supervisor, Rick Cushman, conceded in sworn depositions in January the actions were illegal. "But Huonker denied he knew of or orchestrated the misdirection of the money. "
Wisconsin Community Bank came to the Madison area about a decade ago when it purchased Cottage Grove State Bank. The bank, with $400 million in assets, is one of the national leaders in the U.S. Department of Agriculture 's loan program that finances rural business development. It is a subsidiary of Heartland Financial USA in Dubuque, Iowa, which has banking companies in seven states. The bank is based locally in Cottage Grove, with offices in Fitchburg, Madison, Monroe and Verona.
Huonker, who resigned from Wisconsin Community Bank shortly before it sued Cason, said he 's been advised by Cushman, regional president of the bank, not to comment on the case. In a deposition, Huonker, who had 15 years of banking experience, acknowledged he started job-hunting last spring because of his "screw-ups " in handling Cason 's loans. But in an interview, Cushman and bank president Tom Wilkinson backed Huonker. "I think Scott tried to do the very best job he could under very difficult circumstances, " Wilkinson said. The two bank officials declined to discuss the bank 's lawsuit and Cason 's counterclaim. Cushman called suing a client "a last resort. " A trial before Dane County Circuit Judge Michael Nowakowski is scheduled for June 9.
Much of the dispute between Cason and Wisconsin Community Bank centers on an unsigned letter Huonker sent to Cason on April 2, 2007, court records show. Titled "Loan Commitment, " the seven-page letter pledges the bank would lend Cason $3.9 million for construction of a precast concrete manufacturing plant in Arlington. The plant was also backed financially by Columbia County and the village of Arlington, population 500.
Throughout the fall of 2006 and the spring of 2007, Huonker accompanied Cason to meetings with local officials and helped plot strategy for launching the business. Cason said Huonker assured him the bank would help finance the plant and that the USDA had agreed to underwrite the project. Arlington Village President Bill Stewart, who, like Huonker is a commercial lender, said others also assumed Wisconsin Community Bank was funding the venture. "I had a really secure feeling we were going to get the loan, " Cason said. "A large reason for that was I had a bank vice president (Huo
Source: Madison.com