Are there other sources going into shady things they were doing?
And some of the numbers are high looking in this, but it literally states "its $9.5 billion fund," when the article here is talking about how it had 100+ billion in bonds. Which were deemed safe.
Let that sink in. Yes, they had 9 billion they were investing. But they had over 120 billion sunk in "safe" bonds. That is, the 9 billion was /supposed/ to be the risky part of their portfolio. Yes, they probably took some excess risk there. But that is definitively not the risk that tanked them. And any complaints in that direction is a side show that has virtually nothing to do with what happened. Unless you want to say they weren't doing it enough.
They were in the top 20 biggest banks in the USA. "regional" is a term of art more than used in the conventional way. I think that most people who hear "regional bank" think of one with only a few branches and a relatively small amount of assets (compared to global behemoths). SVB was very much a world-class player in terms of both general sophistication and AUM.