Robert M. Kowalski, Embezzlement Conspiracy, Illinois 2021

CHICAGO — A federal grand jury in Chicago has returned a superseding indictment against four new defendants, including the former Vice President of a failed Chicago bank, in a $23 million embezzlement scheme.

The indictment, announced by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois, charges Robert M. Kowalski, a Chicago attorney, and four others with conspiracy to commit embezzlement. The charges come in addition to those brought against four former Washington Federal Bank for Savings employees, who were indicted last year for allegedly conspiring with Kowalski and others to embezzle money from the bank.

The new charges allege that the bank's former Vice President, James R. Crotty, 41, of Tinley Park, Ill., joined several of the other defendants in a conspiracy to embezzle at least $31 million in bank funds. Crotty and the other conspirators transferred bank funds to Kowalski and the three other new defendants, real estate developers Boguslaw Kasprowicz, 63, of Burbank, Calif., and Miroslaw Krejza, 62, of Chicago, and contractor Marek Matczuk, 57, of Park Ridge, Ill., and others, without all of the required documentation and often without any documentation whatsoever, the indictment states.

The conspirators allegedly falsified bank records to conceal the embezzlement from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The indictment also alleges that Kasprowicz used at least $1.6 million of the embezzled funds to pay credit card accounts in the name of the bank's former President, who has since died and is not charged in the indictment.

The superseding indictment charges all ten defendants with conspiracy to commit embezzlement. Kasprowicz also faces several tax charges for allegedly underreporting his personal and corporate income in numerous tax returns. The indictment also renews tax charges against Robert Kowalski, as well as bankruptcy fraud charges against Robert Kowalski and his sister, Jan R. Kowalski, of LaGrange, for allegedly defrauding Robert Kowalski's creditors and the trustee in his bankruptcy case.

Arraignments on the new charges are set for March 4, 2021, at 10:00 a.m., before U.S. District Judge Virginia M. Kendall in Chicago.

The superseding indictment was announced by John R. Lausch, Jr., United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Jay N. Lerner, Inspector General of the FDIC's Office of Inspector General; Tamera Cantu, Acting Special Agent-in-Charge of IRS Criminal Investigation in Chicago; Emmerson Buie, Jr., Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Field Office of the FBI; Catherine Huber, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Central Region of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Office of Inspector General; Brad Geary, Special Agent-in-Charge of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of Inspector General in Chicago; Joseph M. Ferguson, City of Chicago Inspector General; and Elissa Rhee-Lee, Chicago Housing Authority Inspector General. Valuable assistance was provided by the U.S. Trustee Program.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr/four-new-defendants-added-federal-indictment-alleging-multi-million-dollar-embezzlement