The U.S. Department of Justice announced on September 21, 2026, that Tomás Niembro Concha, the former Chief Executive Officer of Puerto Rico–based Nodus International Bank (“Nodus”), was sentenced to 112 months in prison and three years of supervised release in the Southern District of Florida for his role in a fraud and sanctions evasion scheme. On October 6, 2026, federal prosecutors asked the court to amend the judgment to include, directly or by reference, the Preliminary Order of Forfeiture granted in May 2026. That order required Niembro to forfeit more than $16.9 million, the value of the proceeds he obtained from the wire fraud conspiracy. The court amended the judgment the same day. The sentence comes just months after Niembro, a Spanish and Venezuelan national, pleaded guilty in March 2026 to a two-count information charging him with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (“IEEPA”). Several months before Niembro’s guilty plea, his co-conspirator Juan Ramirez, who served as Nodus’s Chairman of the Board and co-owned the bank with Niembro, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his role in the scheme. As part of his plea, Ramirez agreed to forfeit at least $13.6 million, the value of the proceeds he received for his role in the conspiracy.
According to federal prosecutors, from 2021 to 2023, Niembro conspired with others to provide financial assistance to an unnamed individual who had been designated under U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, an act that allegedly violated the IEEPA. Prosecutors stated that Nodus foreclosed on the designee’s New York home to pay off a loan of about $2.5 million that predated the designation, and that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) had authorized the foreclosure. However, Niembro allegedly made a separate “private” arrangement with the designee under which Nodus sold the property back to him for $4 million through a front company. According to prosecutors, OFAC never approved that transaction, and U.S. sanctions laws prohibited it.
On the fraud charge, prosecutors alleged that Niembro, Ramirez, and others drained money from Nodus for their own benefit, which eventually led to the bank’s collapse in 2023. According to the factual proffer, between 2017 and 2023, Niembro and Ramirez arranged for Nodus to buy $11 million in “certificates of investment” from a Miami-based lender so that the money could be lent back to them for personal use. Prosecutors further alleged that the two had Nodus buy at least 47 promissory notes worth about $25.3 million from a Miami company they jointly owned, so that they could keep the proceeds. Prosecutors also accused the two of intentionally hiding from Nodus’s other directors and executives that the investments were meant for Niembro’s and Ramirez’s personal benefit. In his plea, Niembro admitted that the scheme was designed to get around a Puerto Rico law that bars international banks from lending to shareholders, executives, or employees without written approval from the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions.
DOJ Press Release | U.S. Motion to Amend Judgment to Include Forfeiture | Amended Judgment