The federal courthouse in Lincoln. (Aaron Sanderford/Nebraska Examiner)

LINCOLN – A key associate in the effort to defraud financial institutions out of $45 million is headed to prison, with a judge condemning his role as “deliberate and calculated.”

Jesse Hill, a financial advisor based out of Hickman, helped Lincoln businessman Aaron Marshbanks fool nearly 20 banks into loaning Marshbanks money, purportedly for real estate ventures. Hill, 35, was sentenced to five years in federal prison Thursday.

It was one of the largest bank frauds in state history and was first reported by the Examiner a month after Marshbanks was found dead in a downtown Lincoln parking garage of a drug overdose.

Supporters of Hill from his church, Country Bible, filled a courtroom to overflowing at the federal

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