Charles J. Antonucci Sr., the former president and chief executive of the Park Avenue Bank of New York, made false statements to regulators in an effort to obtain about $11 million from the U.S. government's Troubled Asset Relief Program, prosecutors said. He is the first person to be charged criminally with attempting to defraud TARP, the bank bailout program passed as the nation teetered on the verge of an economic meltdown in 2008, prosecutors said.

Park Avenue Bank, a lender with more than $500 million in assets that specialized in commercial-real-estate loans, failed on Friday after piling up more than $27 million in net losses last year. Bad real-estate loans shrank the bank's capital to just $3.3 million at year's end, down 87% from two years earlier, according to filings the bank made with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

"The bank was broken, so, in October and November 2008, [Mr.] Antonucci methodically went about pretending to fix it," said Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, at a press conference.

Prosecutors charged Mr. Antonucci with 10 counts of fraud, bribery and other crimes, including accepting free plane rides from a bank customer and stealing $103,000 from pastors of a church in Coral Springs, Fla. He could face up to 30 years in prison for each fraud and embezzlement charge. The bank's four branches were taken over by Valley National Bank.

Mr. Antonucci was taken into custody by federal agents at 7 a.m. at his home in Fishkill, N.Y. Unshaven and bespectacled, he sat quietly next to his lawyer and said little at a bail hearing Monday. He wore a red St. John's University hooded sweatshirt, blue track pants and brown loafers.

Bail was set at $2 million. "These charges are what they are," said Charles Stillman, a lawyer for Mr. Antonucci. "We're going to study them and consider what our appropriate response to the charges will be."

The criminal charges against Mr. Antonucci come as regulators are ratcheting up their efforts to hold bank executives responsible as more financial institutions succumb to bad real-estate loans and other problems.

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