Feds target former Bears QB McMahon

Jim McMahon, always known to keep his cool under pressure in the pocket, now faces a tough defensive line: the federal government.

The Super Bowl-winning Bears quarterback from 1982-1988 has been named in a lawsuit filed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The newspaper said that McMahon had been a board member for the Broadway Bank, which was closed by the FDIC in 2010.

The FDIC wants to recover $104 million in loans made by the bank before it was shut down, according to the newspaper. In addition to McMahon, six other former Broadway Bank board members and two former bank executives have been targeted.

He only voted to approve just one of the 17 bad loans — a two-year, interest-only $28 million loan for a condo project in Miami Beach. The FDIC said the bank lost $19.5 million on the loan, according to the Sun-Times.

The bank had been owned by the family of Alexi Giannoulias, the former Illinois state treasurer who made an unsuccessful run for President Barack Obama's old U.S. Senate seat two years ago.

The lawsuit, which was filed last month, identified the former QB as "James McMahon," but the Sun-Times was able to confirm it was indeed the former Bear. The Sun-Times notes that McMahon joined the bank's board in 2003, the same year closed his Arena restaurant and handed over the keys to Broadway Bank.

McMahon was not a diligent board member, according to the Sun-Times report. He "repeatedly missed critical board meetings," the federal agency's lawsuit says. The report criticizes the entire bank as "grossly inattentive to the affairs of the bank — deferring excessively to the whims of the Giannoulias family."

McMahon said in a statement to the Sun-Times that the FDIC's claims are without merit and he expects to be vindicated.

"I am proud to have served as an outside, independent director for a brief part of the bank's history," he wrote, according to the Sun-Times.