The man who chaired the board of Nodus International Bank was sentenced on Oct. 7 to 62 months in federal prison for a wire fraud conspiracy that drained money from the Puerto Rico bank before it collapsed. Juan Francisco Ramirez, 60, of Miami, must also forfeit about $13.6 million, the amount the Justice Department says represents the proceeds he took from the scheme. The government puts the bank’s loss at no less than $23,613,371.
For anyone who keeps savings at a small bank, the case raises a practical question about where a depositor’s money stands when the people running the bank are lending to themselves. The Justice Department’s announcement says Nodus was a Puerto Rican International Banking Entity, that it went into voluntary liquidation in March 2023, and that “innocent people lost their savings.”
Nodus agreed to liquidate in March 2023 and Ramirez was sentenced on Oct. 7, 2026, a gap of three and a half years that shows how slowly bank-failure cases reach a verdict.
Get the deadline alerts before they pass →
Sham investments that hid insider loans
Prosecutors describe two parallel schemes. From 2017 to 2023, Ramirez conspired to invest more than $11 million of Nodus funds in a Miami-based lender, which then loaned the money to Ramirez and a co-conspirator. The bank’s investments were shams, the department says, used to conceal loans to insiders that the bank was barred from making.
From January 2018 to September 2021, Ramirez and the co-conspirator induced the bank’s board and its comptroller to buy at least 47 promissory notes totaling about $25.3 million from a Miami finance company the two men jointly owned. The notes were presented as funding loans to third parties. Prosecutors say the proceeds instead paid for personal investments, mortgages and credit card bills.
The pair hid the transactions from the other board members, from bank executives and from the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions of Puerto Rico, known as OCIF, which regulates the island’s banks.
The April 2023 portfolio purchase
The last step came after the bank was already in trouble. In early March 2023, OCIF said it intended to liquidate Nodus, and later that month the bank agreed to a voluntary liquidation. On April 28, 2023, without OCIF’s authorization, Ramirez and the co-conspirator had the bank buy a loan portfolio of about $26 million, most of it delinquent, nonperforming and uncollateralized.
The bank accepted the portfolio as payment of the finance company’s debt on the 47 notes. That cleared the debt for the finance company and its owners, and left the bank holding the bad loans. The roughly $26 million portfolio was close in size to the $25.3 million in notes it was used to retire, which means the finance company’s owners, Ramirez among them, were relieved of nearly the whole obligation.
Sentence, forfeiture and what officials said
Ramirez pleaded guilty in September 2025 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in the Southern District of Florida. Besides 62 months in prison, the court ordered him to forfeit money the release says represents the proceeds he derived from the conspiracy. The Southern District of Florida office states the figure as over $13.6 million, while the Justice Department’s national press office describes it as approximately $13.6 million.
The forfeiture of about $13.6 million is a little more than half of the bank’s loss of at least $23,613,371, and the two figures measure different things: one is what Ramirez is ordered to give up as proceeds, the other is what the bank lost. The release does not say whether the bank’s liquidator or anyone else will receive forfeited funds.
A. Tysen Duva, the assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, said Ramirez “abused the trust of his bank’s depositors.” Jason A. Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said he “looted” the bank. Charles Miller, acting special agent in charge of the IRS Criminal Investigation Florida field office, said financial fraud comes down to a simple rule: do business honestly and protect depositors.
IRS Criminal Investigation led the case with support from OCIF and the Treasury Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture. Assistant U.S. Attorney Felipe Plechac-Diaz and trial attorneys Javier Urbina and Samir Paul of the Criminal Division’s Money Laundering, Narcotics and Forfeiture Section handled the prosecution, as part of the Homeland Security Task Force initiative.
What depositors can learn from the Nodus case
The Southern District of Florida’s sentencing release is the primary account of the case, including the case number, 25-cr-20384, and the loss figure. It does not name individual depositors, and it does not say how much of the forfeited money, if any, will go back to people who lost savings.
The warning signs in the charges are specific: large investments in a related lender, notes bought from a company the bank’s own chairman owned, and a regulator kept out of the loop. Depositors cannot see those transactions, but they can ask a bank, in writing, who regulates it and whether deposits are federally insured, and they can read the regulator’s notices when it announces an intent to liquidate, as OCIF did in March 2023.
Keeping statements and account numbers matters in any bank failure, because the liquidator works from the bank’s records. The Justice Department’s release remains the source for the sentence and the amounts.
More Financial Reading
- 24 Ways to Stretch a $2,087 Social Security Check
- 17 Places to Find Your Share of the $4.25 Billion States Give Back
- 20 Medicare Money Moves Now That Part D Caps at $2,400
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Financial Wire’s editorial team.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
