A former Community Bank & Trust executive was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Thursday for using customers and family members to mastermind a multimillion-dollar fraud conspiracy that helped lead to his bank's downfall.

U.S. District Judge William O'Kelly also sentenced Randy Jones, 50, to pay nearly $6 million in restitution and serve five years of probation after his release. While the prison term was fewer than the 151 months the federal guidelines recommended, it was also well above the two years defense attorneys wanted.

"Considering all the facts and other sentences imposed in similar cases, I find it to be reasonable given the circumstances," O'Kelley said.

Jones pleaded guilty in January to receiving kickbacks for real estate loans while he was an executive vice president at the failed Cornelia-based bank where he worked for 30 years.

CB&T is among 61 banks that have failed in Georgia since 2008, and many were headquartered in North Georgia.

Unlike some other failed banks in Georgia, CB&T was no fly-by-night operation. It opened in 1900 and had been insured with the FDIC since 1934, growing to operate 36 branches across the region. Fueled by real estate and construction loans, the bank had $1.1 billion in assets and 400 employees when regulators shut it down in January 2010.

Over the years, it became the lender of choice for many North Georgia powerbrokers. It made a series of loans to Gov. Nathan Deal totaling at least $2.4 million from 2006 to 2008 when he was a congressman to help back a failed sporting goods store run by his daughter and son-in-law.

But regulators say the bank's balance sheets were not as healthy as they seemed during those boom years. An FDIC report in September accused the bank of failing to follow its own loan policy and claimed that one unnamed senior officer alone was responsible for more than $10 million in bad loans.

Prosecutors say Jones was a symbol of the bank's deep-rooted problems, and their investigation led to three other guilty pleas for bank customers who were also involved in various side deals.

One plot involved Joseph Penick Jr., a bank customer who authorities say received loans from Jones to buy tracts of land in North Georgia. Jones then financed transactions to another customer, Douglas Emig, at inflated prices. As a reward for the returns — he tripled his profits in one deal - prosecutors say Penick paid Jones more than

$770,000 and Emig more than $470,000 for a pair of land deals.

Penick was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay more than $2 million in restitution for his role in the scheme, while Emig must serve 36 months behind bars and owes more than $2 million in restitution.

The investigation also yielded a third suspect, Berrong Moulton, a local real estate developer, who prosecutors say took out $2.8 million in loans with Jones' approval using his unsuspecting mother, wife and daughter's names so he could pay down millions of dollars in personal and business loans he couldn't afford to repay.

Moulton, who also pleaded guilty to the charges, was sentenced to 30 months in prison and ordered to repay more than $2.3 million in restitution.

But authorities say Jones didn't stop there.

Investigators say he forged the signatures of family members without their consent to obtain more than $800,000 in loans from the bank. He then turned around and used the money to buy a stake in six Zaxby's fast food restaurants.

During a two-day sentencing hearing, Jones apologized to the court and told the judge in a letter that "my actions are purely no one's fault but my own." Prosecutors urged the judge to sentence him to at least 12 years behind bars, while his attorney recommended a two-year sentence so he could help care for his children.

O'Kelley said he ultimately decided that a 10-year sentence would be both an effective deterrent and a reasonable punishment for the high-profile fraud orchestrated by a top bank executive.

"I've struggled with it," said O'Kelley, a senior judge.