The former board chairman and co-owner of Nodus International Bank, a Puerto Rican International Banking Entity, was sentenced Thursday to 62 months in prison.
Juan Ramirez, 60, of Miami, led a scheme to fraudulently obtain more than $23.6 million from Nodus Bank. Ramirez was ordered to forfeit more than $13.6 million, representing the value of the proceeds he derived from the wire fraud conspiracy.
In September 2025, Mr Ramirez pleaded guilty to an information charging one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Mr Ramirez conspired with others to siphon money from Nodus Bank, according to a Department of Justice statement. Mr Ramirez and a co-conspirator concealed from other Nodus Bank board members and executives, and the bank’s regulator—the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions of Puerto Rico (OCIF) — that certain investments or loans were for the benefit of Mr Ramirez and a co-conspirator, in violation of Puerto Rican law and Nodus Bank policy regarding insider transactions.
From 2017 to 2023, Mr Ramirez conspired with others to invest more than $11 million of Nodus Bank’s funds in a Miami-based lender so that it could loan those funds to Mr Ramirez and a co-conspirator for their own benefit. Mr Ramirez and his co-conspirators knew that these transactions were illegal and took steps to conceal their prohibited nature by having the bank make sham investments in the lending entity.
Between January 2018 and September 2021, Mr Ramirez and a co-conspirator fraudulently induced Nodus Bank’s board and comptroller to agree to, or facilitate, the purchase of at least 47 promissory notes totalling about $25.3 million from a Miami-based finance company that Mr Ramirez and the co-conspirator jointly owned.
These promissory notes purported to fund loans to legitimate individuals or businesses, but in fact Mr Ramirez and the co-conspirator used the loan proceeds for their own benefit, including to make personal investments in third-party companies, pay personal mortgages, or cover personal credit card expenses.
In early March 2023, OCIF notified Nodus Bank of its intention to place the bank into liquidation, and later that month Nodus agreed to enter into a voluntary liquidation.
On April 28, 2023, knowing the liquidation process would commence imminently and without OCIF authorisation, Mr Ramirez and a co-conspirator caused Nodus Bank to purchase a loan portfolio totalling about $26 million from their Miami-based finance company.
Most of these loans were delinquent, nonperforming, and otherwise uncollateralised. Mr Ramirez and a co-conspirator caused Nodus Bank to accept the loan portfolio as payment of their Miami-based finance company’s debt arising from the 47 promissory notes Nodus Bank purchased from 2018 to 2021. This directly benefited the finance company (and Mr Ramirez and his co-conspirator) by relieving it of its debt to the bank.
Mr Ramirez’s actions caused Nodus Bank to lose at least $23,613,371.