A San Ramon bank executive was sentenced to more than a year in federal prison Monday after he was found guilty of six counts of mail fraud, federal authorities said.

United States District Judge William B. Shubb also sentenced Joel Blanford, 44, to three years of supervised release for the mortgage fraud scheme. Blanford was arrested after a lengthy investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation.

According to evidence presented at trial, from approximately April 2003 through October 2005, Blanford, while working as a senior sales representative for Long Beach Mortgage, a wholesale subprime lender and former subsidiary of Washington Mutual Inc., participated in a scheme to defraud his employer.

Blanford earned compensation based on the volume of loans processed by Long Beach Mortgage. The evidence established that he paid a loan coordinator in cash and checks to falsify documents, provide false verification of borrowers’ employment or professional licensing status, and turn a blind eye to fraudulent representations contained in loan applications and other documents submitted to Long Beach Mortgage.

Investigators said that in each of the years 2003, 2004, and 2005, before taxes and payroll deductions, Blanford received more than $1 million in commissions and other compensation from Long Beach Mortgage as a result of his scheme.

Between April 2003 and October 2005, he paid the loan coordinator more than $50,000 in checks alone, federal investigators said. “This investigation exposed a sophisticated chain of fraud that started at the homebuyer level and extended all the way to banking insiders,” said U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner. “It is a lesson that those earning million-dollar paychecks are not exempt from significant criminal penalties.” This case was done in connection with the President’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. The task force was established to wage an aggressive, coordinated and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes.