DENVER—A former bank executive convicted of fraud and conspiracy apparently jumped to his death Friday, hours before he was to be sentenced for his role in the 1998 collapse of BestBank in Boulder.
Edward Mattar III apparently jumped from the 27th floor of an apartment building at 18th and Arapahoe streets downtown just before 4 a.m., U.S. Attorney’s spokesman David Gaouette said. He said the window Mattar fell from had been smashed out with a hammer.
Mattar, 68, was set to be sentenced at 2 p.m. and the coroner’s office notified Judge Richard Matsch before the hearing that Mattar had died in an apparent suicide. Gaouette said the office believes it was the same Edward Mattar who was set to be sentenced.
Gaouette didn’t immediately have access to Mattar’s sentencing records. The Rocky Mountain News reported that prosecutors planned to ask for a sentence of 14 years, forfeiture of $4.7 million and $134 million in restitution.
Mattar’s lawyer, Peter Bornstein, said he didn’t think prosecutors would have received a sentence that long but he said he couldn’t talk about whether he had discussed that with Mattar.
“I have no idea what was in his mind and I don’t think anyone else does, certainly not the prosecution,” Bornstein said.
He said Mattar, who wasn’t married and didn’t have family in Colorado, shouldn’t only be remembered for the BestBank disaster.
“He was a man of many dimensions. He was portrayed as one-dimensional character with a gruff exterior. Under that, was a man with a warm heart,” said Bornstein, who said he wasn’t ready to talk about what he will remember about Mattar.
Mattar was convicted along with Thomas Alan Boyd and Jack O. Grace Jr. in February of bank fraud, wire fraud, filing false bank statements and conspiracy.
Matsch found the men guilty of trying to hide a collapse of the bank’s credit card portfolio from regulators and the bank’s board of directors in 1998.
