Juan Francisco Ramirez, 60, of Miami, used the bank he chaired to fund his own investments, mortgages and credit card bills, and on Oct. 7 a federal judge in the Southern District of Florida sentenced him to 62 months in prison. Prosecutors say the scheme cost Nodus International Bank at least $23,613,371. Ramirez, the former board chairman and co-owner of the Puerto Rico bank, was also ordered to forfeit more than $13.6 million.

The Justice Department’s announcement says Ramirez pleaded guilty in September 2025 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Nodus, a Puerto Rican International Banking Entity, went into voluntary liquidation in 2023. The case is an insider-fraud story: the people who took the money ran the bank, and the losses landed on the bank itself.

That raises the question depositors ask when a bank fails, which is whether their money was safe. The Justice Department’s account does not give a depositor count or say whether Nodus deposits were federally insured, and the bank was not described as FDIC-insured. It does say that depositors lost savings when the bank collapsed, and Duva, quoted below, tied the loss to the bank’s failure.

Ramirez was sentenced Oct. 7, and the order to forfeit more than $13.6 million is the next piece of the case to watch.

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How the money left the bank

Prosecutors describe two schemes that ran for years. From 2017 to 2023, Ramirez and a co-conspirator had the bank invest more than $11 million in a Miami-based lender, which then loaned the money to the pair. The investments were sham transactions meant to disguise loans the bank was not allowed to make, and they were hidden from other board members, executives and the regulator, the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions of Puerto Rico, known as OCIF.

From January 2018 to September 2021, they got the board and the bank’s comptroller to buy at least 47 promissory notes, worth about $25.3 million, from a Miami finance company the two jointly owned. The notes were presented as funding loans to legitimate borrowers. According to the Justice Department, the proceeds went to Ramirez and his co-conspirator for personal investments, mortgages and credit card bills.

A purchase made after the regulator moved in

In March and April 2023, OCIF moved to liquidate the bank, and Nodus agreed to a voluntary liquidation later that month. On April 28, 2023, without OCIF’s authorization, Ramirez and his co-conspirator had the bank buy a loan portfolio of roughly $26 million from their finance company. Prosecutors say most of those loans were delinquent, nonperforming and uncollateralized. The purchase paid off the finance company’s debt on the 47 notes, which benefited the two men and not the bank.

The $23,613,371 loss figure is the minimum cited in court documents for what the bank lost, so it is a floor and not a final accounting of the harm.

What the prosecutors and agents said

Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said Ramirez “abused the trust of his bank’s depositors.” U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones said Ramirez “looted” the bank, steering millions of dollars to himself and associates. Charles Miller, the acting special agent in charge of IRS Criminal Investigation’s Florida office, said “Financial frauds can be complicated,” and that the law requires honest business and protection of depositors.

IRS Criminal Investigation led the investigation, with support from OCIF and the Treasury Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture. The case, number 25-cr-20384, was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Felipe Plechac-Diaz and by trial attorneys in the Criminal Division’s Bank Integrity Unit. The Justice Department lists it as part of the Homeland Security Task Force initiative.

The announcement does not say where the forfeited money will go or whether any of it will reach depositors.

Checking whether a bank’s deposits are insured

Deposit insurance is what separates a bank failure from a personal loss. The FDIC says on its deposit insurance page that coverage is automatic when an account is opened at an insured bank, and that “the standard insurance amount is $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category.” The page offers tools to double check that an account and bank are FDIC-insured, and a phone line, 1-877-ASK-FDIC, where staff can confirm coverage.

The details in the Nodus case show why that check matters. The Justice Department called Nodus a Puerto Rican International Banking Entity and did not describe it as FDIC-insured. A depositor can ask for the bank’s insured status in writing, or use the FDIC’s tools, rather than assume it.

Insider fraud like this was hidden from the board and the regulator for years, according to prosecutors, so a depositor cannot see it coming from the outside. Whether an account is insured is the part that can be confirmed.

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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.