Five Star Bank in a federal lawsuit accused a Rochester-area restaurateur of engaging in a “check-kiting” scheme that defrauded the bank of $18.9 million.
The bank accuses Katherine Mott of being the driving force behind the scheme. She is identified in the suit as the owner of several businesses, including restaurants and wedding venues.
Five Star Bank is investigating fraudulent activity that the bank says could amount to exposure of up to $18.9 million.
Mott could not immediately be reached to comment Tuesday.
The Wyoming County-based bank, which serves upstate markets including Buffalo and Rochester, disclosed in a regulatory filing Monday that it had been defrauded by a business customer and was seeking to recoup those funds. The bank said it discovered the fraud as part of routine fraud monitoring.
The suit also lists Robert Harris as a defendant, but targets Mott as having “sole control over the management and financial affairs of each entity.”
The suit claims Mott “perpetrated a fraudulent check-kiting scheme in order to artificially inflate the balance of the various entity defendants’ bank accounts with (Five Star) and create an artificial source of funding.”
Mott received attention in Rochester-area media last fall when she bought…
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