The Justice Department announced October 7, 2026 that Juan Francisco Ramirez, 60, of Miami, former board chairman and co-owner of Nodus International Bank in Puerto Rico, was sentenced to 62 months in prison and three years of supervised release. He must forfeit about $13.6 million, the value of his proceeds. He pleaded guilty in September 2025 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
According to court documents, from 2017 to 2023 Ramirez and others invested more than $11 million of the bank’s funds in a Miami-based lender through sham investments so the money could be loaned to Ramirez and a co-conspirator. From 2018 to 2021 they induced the board and comptroller to buy at least 47 promissory notes totaling about $25.3 million from a finance company they jointly owned, and used the proceeds for personal investments, mortgages and credit card bills.
In March 2023 the Puerto Rico regulator, OCIF, told the bank it planned to place it in liquidation. On April 28, 2023, without OCIF authorization, Ramirez and a co-conspirator had the bank buy a roughly $26 million loan portfolio, mostly delinquent and uncollateralized, from their finance company to cover its debt. DOJ says the bank lost at least $23,613,371. IRS Criminal Investigation led the case.