An Unabashed Felon!
Shaun Hayes is an unabashed felon. And no, I don’t mean Sean Hayes the actor from Will and Grace. I’m referring to the Hayes who recently wrote a book and is making the rounds in St. Louis about his meteoric rise and fall.
Hayes was born in Thayer, Missouri, a rural town with a population of 2,000 that's about halfway between St. Louis and Kansas City. In other words, it's literally in the middle of nowhere. His parents were small-business owners who never trusted banks and had large (for them) amounts of cash stashed at home.
As a teen Hayes worked at a motel, and then freelanced selling fireworks and firewood, always making a buck or two. When he went to college, he started lending money to classmates who needed help for a week or two before their allowance came through: “Give me a check for $220 dated in a week and I’ll give you $200 in cash.” He took out loans from banks to finance that business.
After graduation, Hayes took a job with UMB Bank, a big regional bank that was tightly controlled by the Kemper family in Kansas City. After showing some smarts, he was transferred to the St. Louis branch with the promise of his becoming the regional president. When he was passed over in favor of a family member, he and a compatriot did something that would start the meteoric rise.
They used their contacts from the UMB customer list to put together a winning bid for a small bank in Kahoka, Missouri, which is 60 miles north of Hannibal, Missouri, and just south of the Iowa border – again, nowhere. He renamed the bank Allegiant. Hayes details his efforts to grow the bank and buy other banks in his book The Grey Choice, which tells a good story, but could have used a strong editor or co-author.
One tidbit he shares highlights how small St. Louis is, not only by the fact that his investors were known to most people in town, but also because Allegiant was itself swindled by, of all people, Malcolm Cheek (I wrote about Cheek in an earlier post). Allegiant was so anxious to make loans, it took a double-pledged and phony stock certificate from Cheek.
The Allegiant story culminates with its sale to National City Bank for just under $500 million, of which Hayes got $14 million plus $500k salary. But Hayes grew tired of being a front man for National City, and obtained control of three smaller banks, Truman, Excel and Sun Security.
Being in control of a bank essentially allows one, at least temporarily, to print money. Through a large number of deals, which are too complicated to describe here, Hayes was flipping loans between the banks and taking a slice one way or the other. Eventually the music stopped, the banks failed, and he was indicted and sentenced to 68 months, and finally landed at Club Fed in Marion, Illinois.
And as yet another example of St. Louis’s small-town nature, Hayes was assigned cellmate Brent Cassity who was in for defrauding his funeral insurance business.
When Hayes was released on parole, one condition was that he not get back into the loan business, a condition he promptly violated, which landed him back in jail.
Today Hayes is driving a school bus and driving for Door Dash, and promoting his book that details his "the meteoric" rise and fall in greate detail,
In his publicity efforts, he fancies himself as "Best Selling Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Felon."
The last three are certainly true. I am not sure about the first.