Puerto Rico bank chairman jailed 62 months for $23.6m insider fraud hidden from board
A thin financial-crime week, but the enforcement that landed is instructive. The standout is a sentencing in Puerto Rico where a bank's own chairman routed money to himself through promissory notes and sham deals the board never saw. Alongside it, AMLA opened the input stage on simplified customer due diligence, and a DOJ plea exposed a laundering network. Five minutes on where the controls failed.
- Ramirez was sentenced on 7 October 2026 to 62 months in prison, three years of supervised release and forfeiture of approximately $13.6 million after pleading guilty in September 2025 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
- From 2017 to 2023 he concealed insider transactions from the bank's board, executives and its regulator OCIF, causing Nodus International Bank losses of at least $23,613,371.
- The scheme used sham investments, 47 promissory notes totalling approximately $25.3 million and an unauthorised $26 million loan-portfolio purchase executed as liquidation loomed.
- AMLA will hold sectoral roundtables on simplified customer due diligence in Frankfurt between 9 November and 2 December 2026, with expressions of interest due 18 October 2026 at 23h59 CEST.
- A DOJ plea during the week revealed a money-laundering network branded "Your Mule Cashout."