Homebuilders convicted as part of $31 million embezzlement scheme that led to collapse of Bridgeport bank
A federal jury has convicted two homebuilders for their roles in a decade-long, $31 million embezzlement scheme that led to the 2017 collapse of Washington Federal Bank for Savings in Bridgeport.
Miroslaw Krejza, 65, of Chicago, and Marek Matczuk, 60, of Park Ridge, were found guilty of conspiring to commit embezzlement and falsify bank records through years of fraudulent real estate loans that left the century-old, family-owned bank insolvent, federal prosecutors said Monday.
Washington Federal had at least $66 million in bad loans on its books when regulators took control of the bank in December 2017. The embezzlement scheme led to criminal charges against 16 defendants, including high-ranking bank officers and former Chicago Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson, who was forced to resign from City Council last year after being convicted of lying to regulators about loans he received from the now-shuttered bank.
John Gembara, 56, CEO and president of Washington Federal, whose grandfather launched the bank in 1913, took his own life in Matczuk’s Park Ridge home less than two weeks before the bank’s closure, according to a medical examiner’s report.
In 2018, a report by the Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General said fraudulent loan activity by Washington Federal employees, including Gembara, depleted the bank’s capital and left it insolvent. For more than a decade, embezzlement funds were disguised as real estate loan disbursements to Krejza, Matczuk and others, with the bank requiring no repayment of the falsified loans, federal prosecutors said Monday.
Krejza and Matczuk are the latest defendants in the case to be convicted.
In March, Chicago attorney Robert Kowalski, 61, was convicted of embezzling more than $8 million from the bank and then lying about the assets and income in bankruptcy proceedings and on his tax returns. Sentencing is scheduled for January. His sister, Chicago attorney Jan Kowalski, pleaded guilty last year to helping her brother conceal more than $357,000 from creditors and the trustee in his bankruptcy case. In June, she was sentenced to 37 months in prison.
Last month, three former members of the Washington Federal board pleaded guilty to conspiring to falsify bank records to deceive federal regulators. William Mahon, George Kozdemba and Janice Weston will be sentenced in December.
Thompson, a scion of the Daley family political dynasty, was the 11th Ward alderman, whose turf included the Bridgeport bank. In February 2022, he was convicted on two counts of lying to federal regulators about loans received from Washington Federal and five counts of filing false tax returns that illegally claimed mortgage interest deductions he never paid.
Under state law, Thompson, who represented the 11th Ward since 2015, was forced to resign his seat on City Council following the felony conviction. In March 2022, then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot appointed Nicole Lee to replace Thompson as alderman.
In July 2022, Thompson was sentenced to four months in prison.
Beyond the fraud, the 2018 Treasury Department report said lax bank supervision by inexperienced examiners at the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency led to several “missed opportunities” for enforcement actions related to the bank’s loan portfolio.
Royal Savings Bank of Chicago bought Washington Federal’s insured deposits and took over its two locations — in Bridgeport and Little Italy — in December 2017.
