At Lundstrom’s three-week trial, which concluded in November, former subordinates testified that he faked accounts to hide uncollectible loans, made at the end of the housing boom to real-estate developers who themselves were broke.

With no money coming in to pay off the loans, the bank’s capital deteriorated, regulators closed in and investors fled from the collapsing shares.

Lundstrom was sentenced in the same courtroom where he once practiced law, having been TierOne’s outside lawyer before joining the company. Dressed in a dark business suit, he looked the judge directly in the eye as the sentence was read. Earlier, he had a chance to make a case for leniency in a short presentation to the judge.

“My career and reputation built over 50 years is destroyed,” he said, speaking in a calm, authoritative voice. He said the thinks about the wiped-out shareholders and employees who lost their jobs “almost every day.”

Some of them were present. About two dozen former TierOne employees attended the hearing. One said she wanted to see Lundstrom in cuffs. Another wore a royal blue First Federal Lincoln T-shirt — a memory of the small local savings and loan association that preceded TierOne.