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Federal prosecutors are accusing a Yorktown general contractor of falsifying claims to receive bank funds, which they say he used for gambling.
On April 28, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana issued an indictment against Richard Turner, 38, charging him with nine counts of bank fraud. The maximum federal sentence for bank fraud is 30 years.
Turner’s attorney, William Dazey of the Indiana Federal Community Defenders, said “local rules prohibit lawyers from commenting on the facts of a case beyond those contained in public filings.”
According to the charging documents, around March 2024, an unnamed health care facility in Muncie hired Turner and his company, Turner Remodeling LLC, for a construction project.
On April 5, 2024, the company signed a construction loan agreement with an unidentified bank headquartered in the southern Indiana district. The agreement provided that the bank would provide a $785,225 loan to pay for the facility’s renovation and expansion costs.
Under the agreement, the bank would pay Turner for his work on the project, but it would only release the funds to him after he supplied the bank with lien waivers – essentially legal receipts for payments between a contractor and subcontractor.
According to the indictment, both Turner and the subcontractor had to sign the waiver before the bank would release the funds to Turner, which he would then use to pay subcontractors.
Federal prosecutors say that from April 2024 to November 2024, Turner submitted fraudulent lien waivers to the bank to enrich himself.
According to the indictment, Turner allegedly forged subcontractors’ signatures on the lien waivers, claiming they had performed work that they did not.
Turner would then submit the fake claims to the bank to receive the loan funds, but since the subcontractors allegedly did not do the work, prosecutors say Turner kept the money for himself.
The indictment states that over the 2024 period, Turner obtained about $188,000 from the bank by submitting lien waivers.
He allegedly used the money for personal expenses, including gambling, according to the lawsuit.
Law enforcement arrested Turner on May 7 in Yorktown. United States Magistrate Judge Kellie Barr released Turner the same day under pretrial release conditions.
District Court Judge Sarah Baker has set a trial for Oct. 26, 2026.
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