ST. LOUIS (AP) - A federal appeals court is ordering a resentencing for a southwest Missouri restaurateur in a $5.5-million bank fraud case, ruling he breached a plea deal in pressing for a lighter prison term.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday vacated Bruce Swisshelm’s January 2016 sentence of a year and a day in prison.
Under a deal with prosecutors, Swisshelm pleaded guilty to bank fraud and money laundering. The owner of Springfield-area restaurants admitted submitting false bank documents to get four commercial loans in 2011.
Prosecutors and Swisshelm had agreed to not argue for a sentence outside of the prison term range of nearly five to six years under federal sentencing guidelines. But the 8th Circuit ruled Swisshelm wrongly pushed for and got a sentence less than that.
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