Tomás Niembro Concha, the 64-year-old former chief executive of Nodus International Bank, was sentenced on September 21 to 112 months in federal prison, which works out to nine years and four months, followed by three years of supervised release. He pleaded guilty on March 19 to conspiring to commit wire fraud and to violating U.S. sanctions law. The Justice Department says the wire fraud centered on promissory notes sold to the bank’s own board for $25.3 million.
How 47 promissory notes moved $25.3 million out of a Puerto Rico bank
Nodus was an international bank based in Puerto Rico. According to the Justice Department’s release, Niembro and his co-conspirators caused the bank to buy 47 promissory notes totaling $25.3 million from Nodus Finance, a company he co-owned with the bank’s board chairman, Juan Ramirez. The purchases ran from January 2018 to September 2021, and the 47 notes average roughly $538,000 apiece. The board was not told that the sellers were insiders, and the proceeds went to the two men.
That was one thread. Between 2017 and 2023, the department says, the conspirators obtained at least $24.9 million from the bank by concealing from directors and from the Puerto Rico regulator, the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions, that certain investments and loans benefited the two executives. One example in the release is $11 million routed through a Miami lender to make secret loans to insiders. In March 2023, as the bank was being liquidated, the conspirators also caused it to accept a loan portfolio in order to pay down the note debt.
Nodus Bank failed in 2023, after the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions issued a March 2023 notice that the bank would be liquidated, and the department describes its collapse as a direct result of the scheme. The release names the bank’s board members, executives and the regulator as the parties deceived, rather than a group of depositors or retail investors.
The sanctions count and the Southampton house
The second charge, conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, covers 2021 through 2023. The department says Niembro agreed to deal with a person on the U.S. sanctions list who supported Venezuela’s state oil company. The bank foreclosed, with federal authorization, on that person’s home in Southampton, New York, to settle a loan of about $2.5 million, and Niembro secretly agreed to resell the house back through a front company for $4 million, $1.5 million above the loan being settled. The resale was not licensed and was barred by the sanctions.
What the court ordered financially, and what it did not
The financial order in the release is a forfeiture of more than $16.9 million, which represents proceeds of the wire fraud conspiracy and equals roughly 68% of the at-least-$24.9 million the department says was obtained from the bank. Forfeiture is an order to give up assets tied to a crime; it is paid to the government, and the release does not say how, or whether, any of the money will be returned to the bank’s creditors.
The release specifies no restitution amount. For a reader trying to gauge what a case like this means for victims, that gap is the central money fact: a prison term of 112 months and a $16.9 million forfeiture figure are both on the record, but a restitution total is not. The release also does not name the court or the judge.
The prosecutors named are Javier Urbina and Samir Paul of the Criminal Division’s Money Laundering, Narcotics and Forfeiture Section, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Felipe Plechac-Diaz of the Southern District of Florida. IRS Criminal Investigation, the Treasury Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture, the FBI and the Puerto Rico regulator supported the case. Niembro, a Spanish and Venezuelan national, entered his plea to a two-count information.
What the Justice Department said about gatekeepers
Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva said in the Justice Department’s release: “When individuals who are supposed to serve as gatekeepers to our financial system choose to abuse that trust and instead use their access to facilitate crimes, the Criminal Division will hold them accountable.” Charles Miller, the acting special agent in charge for IRS Criminal Investigation, pointed to the cooperation among the agencies as the reason the case was uncovered.
The case is an insider fraud at an institution that failed, not a scam aimed at account holders. Households that want to report a scam or fraud they have run into can use the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, which accepts reports of frauds and scams, account takeovers, investment fraud and cryptocurrency crimes. Other Criminal Division announcements, including this sentencing, are collected on its press release page.
The sentence, the 47 notes and the $25.3 million figure all come from the department’s September 21 release, which remains the only public record of the case cited here.
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AI assistance was used in drafting this article, and its figures were checked against the Justice Department release.
