Seven years ago, a crooked Bridgeport bank CEO was found dead with a rope wrapped around his neck in the Park Ridge bedroom of his “right-hand man.”
On Monday, a federal judge sentenced that man, Marek Matczuk, to nearly 13 years in prison for embezzling nearly $6 million from the century-old Washington Federal Bank for Savings, an institution with ties to the Daley family and its political organization.
Matczuk, 61, also was ordered to make nearly $6 million in restitution to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which is still trying to recover $90 million lost in the failure of the bank, which numbered Matczuk among its delinquent mortgage customers.
“The amount of loss in this bank collapse is staggering,” U.S. District Chief Judge Virginia Kendall said, giving Matczuk the second-longest prison sentence in the bank collapse.
Addressing Matczuk and his close ties to John F. Gembara, who was the bank's top executive and chief shareholder, the judge said: “The evidence at trial showed you had daily contact at the bank with Mr. Gembara. Whatever Mr. Gembara wanted, you would do to make him happy. ... You were benefiting from it. It enabled you to go to the casino. It enabled you to go on vacations.
“Sadly, at the end of his life, he chose to be by the person he trusted the most, which is you.”
As federal regulators discovered the massive embezzlement scheme in which so-called “Friends of John” got loans without any collateral or even any expectation they'd ever repay the money, they pushed the bank’s board to suspend Gembara on Nov. 29, 2017.
According to prosecutors, Gembara sought a place to hide, ending up at Matczuk’s $1 million home, which was — and remains — in foreclosure.
Prosecutors said Matczuk and his wife put up Gembara for the weekend, giving him their main bedroom. The couple said they found him dead on Dec. 3, 2017, seated in a chair with a green rope wrapped around his neck and a spiral staircase. Matczuk’s son and Gembara had bought the rope the previous day to hang Christmas decorations at Gembara’s Palos Hills home.
Twelve days later, federal regulators shut down the bank, which the Gembara family had run for three generations.
The Park Ridge police and the Cook County medical examiner's office concluded that Gembara died by suicide, though his family and others involved in the case have expressed doubt that he killed himself.
“When that man took his own life, he raised his hand against himself at my house," Matczuk told Kendall with the aide of a Polish translator. "At that time, a party for my children was taking place. The thought that I wanted to finish off that guy or that I was OK with him finishing himself in my house is not true.”
Gembara had lent Matczuk millions of dollars to build two $1 million homes in Wicker Park. But the homes were never completed. Prosecutors said Matczuk gave them away for no money after the bank failed.
Gembara relied on Matczuk as a driver, handyman and bodyguard who used some of the embezzled money to pay Gembara’s bills, prosecutors said.
Matczuk, who had a stroke shortly after federal investigators questioned him in early 2019, is among 16 people charged in connection with the bank failure. Fourteen have been convicted. Seven await sentencing, including five bank employees who cooperated with investigators.
Gembara’s longtime friend Robert M, Kowalski, a lawyer and contractor, is serving a 25-year prison sentence for embezzling $7.2 million— the stiffest sentence given to anyone in the bank scandal.
Then-Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson, whose grandfather and uncle were Chicago’s longest-serving mayors, got a four-month prison sentence for lying to federal regulators about the money he owed to the bank and for cheating on his income taxes.
The bank's board included William M. Mahon, a high-ranking City Hall official who was also a member of the 11th Ward Regular Democratic Organization run by the Daleys for decades. Mahon got an 18-month prison sentence for falsifying bank records to keep regulators from discovering the scheme.
The bank had lent money to Daley loyalists as well as to the 11th Ward Regular Democratic Organization, which got a loan for repairs on its headquarters a few weeks before the bank was ordered closed.
Washington Federal’s collapse shocked people in Bridgeport, where many people lost money they had in the bank and might never recover.
But Gembara’s widow and his former chief financial officer were aware of the bank’s questionable loans and alerted law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office, years before the bank failed.
