Tomás Niembro, the former chief executive of Nodus International Bank, is now a convicted fraudster in the eyes of a Miami federal court. On Thursday, the 64-year-old pleaded guilty and agreed to forfeit at least $16.9 million after prosecutors said his actions helped siphon off roughly $24.9 million from the Puerto Rico-based bank, a collapse that contributed to Nodus’s failure in 2023. He is set to be sentenced on June 8, 2026, in Miami and faces the possibility of decades in prison under the charges he admitted to, a case that has drawn the attention of regulators and investigators well beyond Florida.
In a press release from the Justice Department, prosecutors said Niembro pleaded guilty to a two-count information that charges him with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). As part of the agreement, he will give up at least $16.9 million. U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones said in the statement that Niembro used his CEO position to siphon more than $24 million, while IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent in Charge Ron Loecker warned that executive-level fraud has real victims and promised that agents will keep chasing complex financial crimes. The plea resolves the federal side of a broader investigation that also involved Puerto Rico’s banking regulator.
How prosecutors say the scheme worked
According to prosecutors, the trouble at Nodus did not happen overnight. Between 2017 and 2023, they say, Niembro and his co-conspirators directed the bank to move money in ways that quietly enriched its owners and hid glaring conflicts of interest.
During that six-year stretch, they allegedly caused Nodus to invest $11 million in a Miami-based lender, then used that lending vehicle to funnel loans to Niembro and former chairman Juan Francisco Ramirez for their own benefit. At the same time, the bank bought at least 47 promissory notes worth roughly $25.3 million from a Miami company that Niembro co-owned, according to the Justice Department. The conspirators later caused Nodus to accept a loan portfolio from that same company in order to pay down debt tied to those notes.
Prosecutors say the financial engineering did not stop there. The department added that the scheme also involved efforts to evade United States sanctions tied to Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, further raising the stakes for everyone involved in the investigation.
Sanctions evasion and a Southampton property
On the sanctions front, federal prosecutors say Niembro crossed an especially bright red line. According to the charges, he conspired with a specially designated national to carry out prohibited transactions involving a house in Southampton, New York.
Prosecutors say the group first foreclosed on the Southampton property, then arranged to sell it back through a front company, a setup that violated U.S. sanctions rules. As reported by Local 10, the Justice Department said the deal had been packaged to slip past Office of Foreign Assets Control restrictions, but investigators ultimately uncovered records that tied the maneuver back into the broader scheme. The episode underscores how cross-border banking and real estate ties can expose financial institutions to both fraud risk and sanctions enforcement.
Local fallout and previous guilty plea
When Nodus failed in 2023, it did not quietly disappear. Depositors and regulators were left scrambling, and that spring the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions of Puerto Rico stepped in to liquidate the bank. The damage is still being tallied through receivership actions and lawsuits as officials try to claw back whatever they can for creditors and depositors.
Niembro is not the only former insider now on the wrong side of a plea deal. The bank’s former chairman, Juan Francisco Ramirez, previously pleaded guilty and agreed to forfeit at least $13.6 million, a development covered in Nodus chairman's guilty plea. Together, the two pleas sketch a picture of a bank being hollowed out from the top while regulators and customers were left holding the bag.
What comes next
Each of the two counts Niembro admitted to carries a statutory maximum of 20 years in prison. A federal judge in Miami will decide his fate at the June 8, 2026 sentencing hearing, after weighing the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines along with other statutory factors such as the scale of the fraud and its impact on victims.
IRS Criminal Investigation led the probe, working with Puerto Rico’s OCIF and the Treasury Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture. The case is being prosecuted by the Criminal Division’s Money Laundering, Narcotics and Forfeiture Section together with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. While the forfeiture agreement ensures that some of the illegal proceeds are returned to the government, the long process of trying to recover funds for depositors and creditors will continue in separate receivership and bankruptcy proceedings, where the financial clean-up is likely to outlast the headlines.
