A former Chattanooga businessman is facing federal securities charge.
An information was brought against James A. Sowersby, who operated Puma Polymers here and then later in Dalton, Ga.,Prior to that he was chief strategy officer for Pathway Polymers.
The information says Puma had a customer, South Valley Specialties, in Sandy, Utah. It says in 2010 that South Valley and its owner, Brent Gines, purchased an ownership interest in Puma. It says another Puma customer was SPB Corp. of St. Petersburg, Russia.
It says in March 2010, Puma acquired a line of credit from Cornerstone Community Bank. It was $300,000, then increased to $800,000 and then to $1,100,000.
In order to obtain advances, Puma would create a customer invoice to the bank and then ship the product to the customer. Payment from the customer was to be sent to a lock box maintained by Cornerstone.
The information says on March 4, 2010, Sowersby signed a promissory note as manager of Puma. It said no foreign receivables would be eligible for the advances.
It says between April 2011 and May 2012 Sowersby conspired with others to cause counterfeit invoices to be submitted to Cornerstone Bank in order to obtain advances on the line of credit.
The information says Sowersby, aided by Gines, caused duplicate invoices to be created for products sold to SPB because they knew it was a foreign company and not eligible for the advances. It says the invoice falsely identified South Valley as the customer.
Also in Federal Court, an indictment has been returned against Steven Villasenor.
It charges him with possessing an image of child pornography.
Another indictment charges several people as having been involved in a meth ring earlier this year.
One of those is Jonathan Bech. It says on May 9 he had over 50 grams of meth.