A man who was found guilty in 2023 for his role in a decadelong, $31 million embezzlement scheme that brought down Washington Federal Bank for Savings in 2017 was sentenced Monday.
Marek Matczuk was sentenced to 155 months, or nearly 13 years, in prison, said Joseph Fitzpatrick, an assistant U.S. attorney. Matczuk was also ordered to pay almost $6 million in restitution and forfeit more than $6 million..
Matczuk, 61, was convicted after being part of a group of some 15 defendants that received embezzled funds from Washington Federal. For more than a decade, Matczuk was using fraudulent real estate loans for personal use, such as paying bills and traveling, according to court documents.
He was also using the money to fund the lifestyle of the now-shuttered bank’s president, John Gembara, who took his own life in Matczuk’s Park Ridge home less than two weeks before the bank’s closure.
The bank was a family-run institution, started by Gembara’s grandfather in 1913, and was a mainstay in the Bridgeport neighborhood.
By the time the bank was seized in December 2017, Washington Federal had at least $66 million in bad loans on its books.
The scheme has led to criminal charges for the several defendants, including a former high-ranking city official, a Chicago attorney and former Chicago Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson.
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