John Gembara News Today

In handing down the sentence, U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall told Janice Weston, "It’s very troubling. You have a few moments in time where you knew it was illegal and you could have left.”

Barbara Glusak, who was Washington Federal Bank for Savings' chief financial officer, kept sounding the alarm about falsified loan records, court records show. But no one heeded the warning, allowing an embezzlement scheme at the bank to continue for six more years.

A former high-ranking city official was sentenced to 18 months in prison Wednesday for helping to conceal a multiyear embezzlement scheme that led to the failure of Washington Federal Bank for Savings, a family-run institution that had been a mainstay in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood for more than a century. William Mahon, 57, pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to falsify bank records ...

Mahon admitted falsifying bank records during the 16 years that he served on the board of Washington Federal Bank for Savings.

They’re looking at ties between a dumpster company, owned by James W. Bracken III, and a former city official who was on the bank’s board, the Sun-Times has learned.

Customers who trusted the crooked bank to do the right thing are still out up to $312,000 each, as the latest story in the Sun-Times investigative series shows.

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 ...

Matczuk, who said he did odd jobs for Washington Federal Bank for Savings and its employees, was given the money on orders of the late bank chief John F. Gembara.

A judge sentenced a LaGrange attorney to more than 3 years in prison for bankruptcy fraud in connection with her brother's bankruptcy.

Six months after his release from federal prison, former Chicago Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson could be in hot water again after court probation officials accused him of failing to pay restitution for his tax-related conviction. Thompson, 54, the former 11th Ward alderman and scion of the Daley political dynasty, was sentenced to four months in prison in July 2022 for tax evasion and lying to ...