Colorfully patterned flooring gave the room more of an air of a modern church social hall than a prison visitation lobby, and contrasted with the grammar school-sized, shabby brown laminate tables spaced about 10 feet apart around the room.

Photos and audio or video recordings were not permitted per Alabama's federal prison regulations.

Butler explained the gravity of his situation hit home within his first few weeks inside. Locked in a metal cell with nothing but a small cot and a toilet for 23 hours a day, the man who had loved to work and play outside for most of his life said he began to consider the events that led him to prison.

What did he conclude?

"If I had only known then what I know now, I wouldn't be sitting in here," he said firmly.

Butler pleaded guilty in February 2014 to six counts of a 51-count indictment of defrauding the SBA of a $1.7 million loan used to develop a grocery store and small retail center in Fosters, Ala., and kiting checks between the $575 million West Alabama Bank and Trust and the $613 million Alabama One Credit Union.

However, while he said his involvement with West Alabama Bank and Trust lead to his fraud indictment and conviction in 2014, Butler explained that his problems began in 2010 when his loans with Alabama One began to draw the attention of the Alabama Credit Union Administration and the NCUA.

"It really started with them auditors and them coming around and trying to get the credit union to pull my loans," Butler said, referring to the examiners and officials from the ACUA and the NCUA. "When [then Member Business Lending Manager] Tammy [Ewing] and [Alabama One CEO] John Dee [Carruth] come around and tell me that I was being harassed and I should get an attorney, I went and got one and that's when all my trouble started."

Butler acknowledged that he had taken Alabama One executives' advice to hire legal counsel they recommended, but said he thought his attorney James Don Turner of the Tuscaloosa, Ala., firm of Turner and Turner had merely written a letter to the regulator.

He was shocked, he said, when he learned later that Turner had threatened the regulator and its examiners with litigation.

The tactic seemed to work, Butler said, and the agencies reduced their pressure. However, Butler said he believed the move led the agencies to call in the FBI to investigate him further.

That was a disaster, he said.

Read more: Butler says he was never late for a payment before he was 55 …

"What you need to understand is that before I was 55, I was never even late with a payment. Ever," Butler said. "Much less anything else. It only started going bad when I got involved with Alabama One."

Butler maintained that as a car wholesaler, he moved between 200 and 250 cars a month, and had a monthly net income of between $75,000 and $125,000. That cash flow fueled Butler's expansions into real estate, car lots and other business ventures, he explained.

That is, until FBI agents began approaching his customers and suppliers with questions.

"I started getting calls from people I deal with saying 'Danny, we just had the FBI here asking about you, what's going on?'"

Under pressure, Butler said, his monthly income dropped to $10,000.

"And $10,000 a month just wasn't going to do it," he said.

Once his income dried up, Butler said, the ability to make loan payments did too.

Butler said he started kiting checks to keep his Fosters grocery store going, and repeated the assertion that executives at both West Alabama Bank and Trust and Alabama One had known about the scheme all along.

"They knew what I was doing, that I was trying to keep these loans going and that I needed some help," Butler said, maintaining he really didn't understand what check kiting was until someone explained it to him later.

"What would I know from kiting checks?" he asked.

However, he acknowledged that he knew his actions were wrong at the time.

Butler explained that he got the idea for the grocery store project from other area residents and his own experience developing a gas station across the street.

"I lived there and I knew I didn't like not having a grocery store close," Butler said of the unincorporated small town located 10 miles southwest of Tuscaloosa. «Other people in Fosters told me the same thing and I also had done the Chevron station and that was going good, so I was pretty sure the grocery store was a good idea."

Even though he no longer owns the grocery store, Butler said both enterprises have been successful and the Chevron station had been earning a profit for years. He added that the grocery store earned roughly $125,000 per week.

Ironically, when asked why he sold his interest in the gas station if it was so successful, Butler said West Alabama Bank and Trust forced him to do so in order to fund the grocery store.

"West Alabama told me I had to do it," Butler explained. "Because I was bumping up against their limit – something like $7 million – and I couldn't get any more unless I got out of the Chevron station.»

He added that Alabama One had never told him anything similar.

"Nobody from Alabama One ever told me I couldn't get any more loans," Butler said. "They just wanted to do these workouts to keep trying to hide what they were doing with me. You know, I wish now they would have stopped doing the loans. I might not be in here."

Butler maintained he did not intend to drive up the cost of the grocery project to draw more money out of the SBA for the loan, a key element of his fraud conviction.

He cited as an example the purchase of a piece of heavy equipment for the project. He might have purchased a piece of used heavy equipment for $300,000 because it was less expensive than buying a new machine, he explained, but then he would have spent another $100,000 on required upgrades. He should have broken the cost of the two machines into two separate invoices, he said, but the sum was part of what got him in trouble.

Butler is now working through a residential drug abuse program and reflecting on his past. Since the prison expects all inmates to work, Butler said he cleans the visitation lobby every day for $11.17 per week.

That amount contrasts sharply with the six figures he used to clear weekly.

"If you had told me a few years ago that I would work for $11.00 per week, I would have laughed at you," Butler said.

"But I am not laughing now."