Sports exec embezzles $1M, goes to prison

SAN DIEGO  — A former San Diego business executive who embezzled more than $1 million from two local companies to help fund a fledgling professional football league was sentenced Monday to three years and five months in prison, federal officials said.

Jaime Cuadra, 58, was former chief financial officer of Oceanic Enterprises Inc. He was convicted of wire fraud and filing a false federal income tax return in connection with siphoning money from Oceanic and its publicly traded parent company, Umami Sustainable Seafood Inc., from 2010 to 2013, said U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy in a news release.

In sentencing Cuadra, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Huff also ordered him to repay all the money he embezzled and more than $380,000 in unpaid taxes.

In court documents, he said he used the embezzled funds to benefit the football league by wooing investors, paying executives, and financing marketing, consulting and public relations programs.

The league isn’t named in the documents, but Cuadra said in interviews last year that he acquired the United States Football League brand. The USFL’s current CEO said in September that the league will launch in March 2015.

Court documents say that Cuadra also used the money he stole to support other businesses, lease a Porsche Cayenne, pay for travel expenses and make personal purchases that included artwork, designer clothing, computers and tickets to sporting events.

He hid the illegal money transfers by mislabeling them as business expenses, prosecutors said.

The FBI and Internal Revenue Service conducted the investigation.

“Mr. Cuadra’s brazen theft of corporate funds from one of our local companies was born from base motives — ego and greed,” Duffy said. “Such crimes shake the foundations of our businesses.”

In an April 2012 interview with U-T San Diego, Cuadra said he came to the United States from Nicaragua as an infant and attended El Cajon Valley High School and graduated from the University of San Diego.