Former Nodus Bank CEO Gets More Than 9 Years For Fraud, Venezuela Sanctions Evasion
By CU Today Staff —
MIAMI—The former CEO of Puerto Rico-based Nodus International Bank has been sentenced to more than nine years in federal prison for a multimillion-dollar fraud that prosecutors said helped bring down the bank and for conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions involving Venezuela.
The Justice Department said Tomás Niembro Concha, 64, was sentenced to 112 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to forfeit more than $16.9 million.
Niembro pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. DOJ said Niembro and others fraudulently obtained at least $24.9 million from Nodus, including through $11 million the bank invested in a Miami lender that was then used to make loans benefiting Niembro and board Chairman Juan Ramirez. Between 2018 and 2021, prosecutors said Niembro and Ramirez also induced Nodus to purchase at least 47 promissory notes totaling approximately $25.3 million from a Miami company they jointly owned.
The case also involved an effort to circumvent U.S. sanctions. Prosecutors said Niembro conspired between 2021 and 2023 to conduct transactions with an individual designated by the Treasury Department for providing material support to Venezuela's state-owned oil company, PDVSA. Nodus had received OFAC authorization to foreclose on the sanctioned individual's Southampton, N.Y., home to satisfy an approximately $2.5-million loan, but Niembro and the individual separately arranged for Nodus to sell the property back for $4 million through a front company—a transaction prosecutors said was prohibited and had not been licensed by OFAC.
The sentencing is the latest development in the collapse of Nodus, which Puerto Rico regulators moved to liquidate in 2023. The Associated Press previously reported that a trustee overseeing the liquidation alleged the bank owed customers about $92 million, with hundreds of depositors in the United States, Venezuela and elsewhere affected. Juan Ramirez separately pleaded guilty in 2025 to a wire-fraud conspiracy in which prosecutors said he fraudulently obtained more than $13.6 million from Nodus.
Originally reported by CU Today.