How can you know that? He himself writes that he was waiting for the bank to ask for some money back and intended to deal with it when it comes.
Lack of detailed planning for something isn't the same as lack of intention to do something when it happens.
Lots of people take loans without precisely knowing where they'll find money to pay them back.
Hell, i'd say in almost all cases that is true. How am i going to know if i'll be at my current job long enough to pay back that car loan? Hypothetically i will have a job, and will pay it back, but in reality i have no idea how i'll pay it back.
At best, i can accurately predict X months of payments. After that, it's all just educated guesses.
The question to me is, do you think he took and spent the money with the expectation that he would be able to pay it back? Seems pretty obvious the answer is no.
Not saying he should be locked up, but let's be reasonable here.
It's definitely fraud by any reasonable definition. Fortunately for him, the definition was unreasonably good to him. However, I'd understand the court giving him a lower sentence on grounds of him appearing (to me at least) to have a mental breakdown of sorts after his accident plus the bank showing incredible negligence in their lending practices. The bank just handing him that much money was so stupid they should probably be fined for it on top of his punishment. If it was straight-up their money, then making sure they loose it for good might be good punishment.
It's one thing to go a couple of thousand overdrawn, quite another to spend $2 million when you have no source of income.
i don't think that would stand in any court. the former doesn't imply the latter by necessity.
If I have a say $50k/year job and borrow say $200k I could reasonably have expected to pay it back, if I then lose my job I could say I had intended to do so but circumstances changed.
if I have $0/year as a job and borrow $2 million, you're not seriously suggesting that any reasonable person would buy "oh I totally was going to pay it back" are you?
My point is that if I didn't actually do anything to deceive you into giving me money (like, I didn't claim that I have a millionaire father who's going to give you the money in case I lose at blackjack) - then it's not really deception on my part; it's just error and/or poor judgement on your part for handing me the money.
Many companies also spend money they lent on frivolous stuff (end of year parties, football tables, etc) that doesn't obviously contribute to the bottom line, so buying some booze and spending some money on strippers, in itself, isn't fraud.
Back to this case: I can see how this would be "obtaining financial advantage by deception and knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime", just as taking money from someone's open purse would be.
The question isn't whether the loan was paid back, it's whether there was an intent to pay it back at the time the loan was taken out. Many of those homeowners foolishly believed their house would appreciate at 20% per year indefinitely (and many lenders were telling people this to convince them to take out loans).
If this guy had actually said to the bank "hey I want to borrow $2 million, I have no income and no collatoral" do you think they would have accepted the loan?
He took advantage of a mistake made by an automated system from the bank, there was no human going "gee the guy with no income wants another $1000 to add to his massive overdraft, sure why not".
I can see how a guy could just overdraw his account and wait for the bank to tell him to pay some of it back. Maybe he thougt that when the bank will request some money back he can always sell cars or celebriy memorabilia and make the ends meet.
He didn't cocieve a plan to buy a helicopter or luxury yaht. He was just living little bit above his means for a while.
Fraud is a bit strong name when you are just doing someting noone forbid you to do.
"I went to strip clubs and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on girls, alcohol, cocaine and whatever else."
that's not the actions of someone who just overdrew his account a bit, or is a bit bad with money.