Mulberry Mess?

We haven’t been able to get anyone at Allied Bank to talk to us, so we can’t confirm its exposure to the Kevin Lewis’ bond scam that was uncovered by bank regulators in October.

But this much we can say: Something put the hurt on Allied’s fourth-quarter earnings.

The Mulberry bank charter filed its year-end call report last week with the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, and it showed a loss of a bit more than $1 million for the last quarter of 2010.

After earning $1.74 million in 2009, Allied was off to a good start with net income of almost $1.9 million by mid-2010. That was followed by a small loss, $84,000, in the third quarter and then the big fourth-quarter hit that dragged the full-year profit down to $714,000.

The fourth-quarter loss includes charge-offs of $2.045 million, $1.975 million of it in the category called “commercial and industrial loans.” In addition to the charge-offs, Allied left $2.23 million in its loan loss allowance at the end of the year, up from $1.38 million at the end of 2009.