Date: December 17, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov CHICAGO — A federal judge in Chicago has sentenced a real estate developer to nearly 13 years in prison for participating in a conspiracy that embezzled millions of dollars from the failed Washington Federal Bank for Savings in Chicago. Washington Federal, which was based in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, was shut down in 2017 after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency determined that the bank was insolvent and had at least $66 million in nonperforming loans. For more than a decade, developer Marek Matczuk was part of a conspiracy that embezzled millions of dollars in bank funds. The embezzled funds were disguised as purported real estate development loan disbursements to Matczuk and others. The conspirators were not required to repay these purported loans, and they never did. A jury in federal court last year convicted Matczuk of Park Ridge, Ill., of conspiring to commit embezzlement and falsify bank records, and aiding and abetting embezzlement by bank employees. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Virginia M. Kendall sentenced Matczuk to 12 years and eleven months in prison and ordered him to pay more than $5.9 million in restitution. The sentence was announced by Morris Pasqual, Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Ramsey E. Covington, Acting Special Agent-in-Charge of IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Chicago Field Office; Vincent R. Zehme, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Region of the FDIC’s Office of Inspector General; Machelle L. Jindra, Special Agent-in-Charge of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of Inspector General in Chicago; Korey Brinkman, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Central Region of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Office of Inspector General; Douglas S. DePodesta, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Field Office of the FBI; Andrea Peacock, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Department of the Treasury, Office of Inspector General; Deborah Witzburg, City of Chicago Inspector General; and Kathryn B. Richards, Chicago Housing Authority Inspector General. Valuable assistance was provided by the U.S. Trustee Program. The government was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michelle Petersen, Kristin Pinkston, and Jeffrey Snell, and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Netols. The federal investigation into the collapse of Washington Federal led to criminal charges against 16 defendants, including the bank’s Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, and other high-ranking employees, for conspiring to embezzle at least $31 million in bank funds. Matczuk and three others were convicted after jury trials, while ten defendants pleaded guilty and two entered into deferred prosecution agreements. Much of the embezzled money was transferred to Chicago attorney Robert M. Kowalski and other individuals outside the bank without all of the required documentation and often without any documentation whatsoever. A jury convicted Robert Kowalski on bankruptcy fraud, bank embezzlement, and false statement charges. Judge Kendall in August sentenced Robert Kowalski to 25 years in federal prison. Robert Kowalski’s sister, Jan R. Kowalski, also an attorney, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to more than three years in prison for fraudulently enabling her brother to conceal more than $357,000 from creditors and the trustee in his bankruptcy case. Three former members of Washington Federal’s Board of Directors pleaded guilty to conspiring to falsify bank records to deceive the OCC. William M. Mahon was sentenced to 18 months in prison; George F. Kozdemba was sentenced to a year in prison; and Janice M. Weston was sentenced to three months in prison. Chicago attorney Patrick D. Thompson was convicted by a jury in 2022 of making false statements to the FDIC regarding the amount of money he received from Washington Federal via a purported loan and other unsecured payments. He was also convicted of filing tax returns in which he falsely deducted interest that he had not actually paid to Washington Federal. Thompson was sentenced to four months in federal prison. IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.
