CLEVELAND, Ohio —The string of convictions related to the largest-ever failure of a natural-person credit union continues.
Joe Spaqi, a businessman here, has been sentenced to 2.5 years in federal prison for illegally obtaining hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans from the failed St. Paul Croatian FCU, which was placed into conservatorship in 2010 by NCUA at an estimated cost of $170 million to the National CU Share Insurance Fund.
Spaqi, 61, was found guilty of conspiring with former SPCFCU COO Anthony Raguz to obtain $965,423 in loans between 2005 and 2009, in the process making “false representations and promises” to obtain the loans, according to the indictment.
At the time he received the loans Spaqi owned several local businesses, including the Eclipse Bar & Grille in Cleveland’s popular Warehouse District. Authorities said Spaqi used a fake name, Luke Nue, in the scheme and on an account he had at the credit union.
In May of this year Spaqi pleaded guilty to four counts of bank fraud and two counts of money laundering.
Raguz, like more than a dozen other people tied to the credit union, is currently in prison.