The heyday of Arkansas Loan and 'Theft'

Arkansas Loan and Thrift Corporation (AL&T) was a hybrid bank in the 1960s that operated for three years outside state banking laws with the help of political connections before coming to a scandalous end.

A U.S. district judge halted the operations and placed the company in receivership in March 1968, and a federal grand jury indicted three officers of the company, as well as a former Arkansas attorney general, a firebrand segregationist who had served five terms in that office and made two unsuccessful races for governor. Bruce Bennett, a former prosecutor in Union County, had played a major role in the historic school-integration crisis at Little Rock in 1957–59, authoring several of the notorious laws passed by the legislature to preserve segregation.

AL&T became a symbol of the corruption and lethargy that were the products of Governor Orval Faubus’ 12-year control of the statehouse and, in the opinion of Governor Winthrop Rockefeller, the Democratic Party’s unfettered reign in government since Reconstruction. It was jokingly called “Arkansas Loan and Theft.”

The grand jury indictment said the four men ran the finance company illegally and dissipated depositors’ money by making loans to themselves and their companies, friends and confederates — loans that were never repaid — and by giving themselves and friends large stock dividends even though the company was broke. The chief operating officer and two other executives were convicted and sentenced to prison for wire, mail and securities fraud, as well as conspiracy and bribery. Bennett, who helped organize AL&T while he was attorney general and profited from it, was indicted on 28 counts, but a longtime friend from El Dorado (Union County), U.S. District Judge Oren Harris, delayed the trial when Bennett revealed that he had throat cancer. Bennett died 10 years later, in 1979, without going to trial.

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https://arktimes.com/news/history-news/2022/09/04/the-heyday-of-arkansas-loan-and-theft