The reality was that Mike Leiby had only $726 in his checking and savings accounts combined. His $40 million estate existed only on documents he had concocted.
Leiby's paper empire began to crumble when he was turned in by two employees whose paychecks had bounced. He is to be sentenced sometime soon in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia after pleading guilty to five counts of bank fraud and one count of credit-card fraud.
But dozens of merchants around Allentown may never see the money owed them.
"People didn't want to believe that he wasn't being honest," said Ernest Kun, head of the Secret Service in the mid-Atlantic states. "In part, that's
because Allentown has a lot of hard-working, honest people who are not used to this kind of deception. And there may have been an element of greed. So maybe you believe the guy, and maybe you just want to believe him."
What may be most amazing about Mike Leiby's story, however, is not that he
succeeded in defrauding bankers and merchants, but that it doesn't happen more often.
"It's simple. Anyone could do it," said Luke Duignam, a Nazareth National Bank official who approved a $27,730 loan for Leiby to purchase the red Mercedes. "It's called robbing the bank without putting a gun in the back."
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In a way, people were predisposed to accept Mike Leiby at face value. His was a well-known and impeccable name in Pennsylvania Dutch country.
Leiby grew up in nearby Kutztown, the son of an insurance executive. After graduating from high school, according to federal investigators, Leiby took off for Florida and a series of jobs that seemed to lead nowhere. He had been a waiter, a luggage store clerk, a car repossessor and a bank teller, where he apparently learned something about credit checks.
When a dental lab he ran failed in the spring of 1986, Leiby returned to his home town and began constructing his pseudo realm.
