A person who pleaded responsible in 2023 for his position in a decade-long $31 million embezzlement scheme that introduced down the Washington Federal Bank for Savings in 2017 was sentenced Monday.
Marek Matczuk was sentenced to 155 months, or almost 13 years, in jail, stated Joseph Fitzpatrick, an assistant U.S. legal professional. Matczuk was additionally ordered to pay almost $6 million in restitution and forfeit greater than $6 million.
Matczuk, 61, was convicted after being a part of a bunch of about 15 defendants who obtained embezzled funds from Washington Federal. According to court docket paperwork, for greater than a decade Matczuk used fraudulent dwelling loans for private use, equivalent to paying payments and touring.
He was additionally utilizing the cash to finance the life-style of the now-closed financial institution’s president, John Gembara, who took his personal life in Matczuk’s Park Ridge dwelling lower than two weeks earlier than the financial institution closed.
The financial institution was a family-owned establishment, based by Gembara’s grandfather in 1913, and was a mainstay of the Bridgeport neighborhood.
When the financial institution was seized in December 2017, Washington Federal had at the least $66 million in unhealthy debt on its books.
The scheme led to legal costs for a number of defendants, together with a former high-ranking metropolis official, a Chicago lawyer and former Chicago Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson.
