SEC Charges Commonwealth Bank Officers with Accounting Fraud

The SEC today charged three former bank executives of Commonwealth Bank with understating millions of dollars in losses and masking the true health of the bank's loan portfolio at the height of the financial crisis.   According to the SEC's complaint, defendants (Edward J. Woodard, Jr., the CEO, President and Chairman of the Board at Norfolk, Virginia-based Bank of the Commonwealth and its publicly-traded parent, Commonwealth Bankshares, along with Chief Financial Officer and Secretary Cynthia A. Sabol, a CPA, and Executive Vice President and Commercial Loan Officer Stephen G. Fields) understated the bank's loan-related losses as well as losses on real estate repossessed by the bank (other real estate owned or OREO) in Commonwealth's SEC filings from November 2008 through August 2010