CLEVELAND – One of the straw borrowers in the massive fraud that sunk St. Paul Croatian FCU on Wednesday was sentenced to one day in prison and ordered to pay $260,000 in restitution to NCUA after pleading guilty to one count of bank fraud.
Ruth Cendol, 55, was one of a number of relatives of Koljo Nikolovski, the purported Macedonian crime figure who earlier this month pleaded guilty to engineering millions of dollars in fraudulent loans from the one-time $240-million credit union. Nikolovski had numerous family members and friends borrow funds from the credit union they never intended to repay. Cendol’s husband, John Cendol, who also is charged in the fraud, is the brother of Rose Nikolovski, Koljo Nikolovski’s ex-wife, who has pleaded guilty to fraud in the case. The ex-wife is scheduled to be sentenced next week.
Cendol’s loan was one of more than 1,000 loans approved by Anthony Raguz, the credit union’s former CEO who also pleaded guilty to the fraud, the biggest ever among credit unions. Millions of dollars was funneled by Koljo Nikolovski to bank accounts in his native Albania and Macedonia.
Last week a prominent Cleveland developer, Eddy Zai, was charged with obtaining $17 million in St. Paul Croatian loans from Raguz, who is scheduled to be sentenced in June.
So far 17 individuals have been charged in the fraud and 10 have been convicted.
