John Spano is best known for briefly buying control of the New York Islanders franchise of the National Hockey League in 1996, before it emerged that he had barely a fraction of the assets to buy the team; he used fraud to borrow enough money to initiate the purchase, believing he could use the fraudulently purchased team itself as the asset to then get the rest of the tens of millions of dollars needed to cover his fraud.
32 Facts About John Spano
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John Spano subsequently pleaded guilty to bank and wire fraud and served a federal prison sentence.
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John Spano graduated from Duquesne University with a degree in business administration in 1986.
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In September 1995, he reached a tentative agreement to buy a 50 percent interest in the Dallas Stars, but the date for the closing was pushed back several times, during which John Spano began making what owner Norman Green called unreasonable demands.
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John Spano made a bid for the Florida Panthers that year after his Stars bid failed, which he abandoned after then-Panthers owner Wayne Huizenga opted not to sell.
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John Spano later agreed to buy the remaining 10 percent of the team held by the management group that had been running the Islanders' day-to-day operations since 1989.
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John Spano billed himself as the owner of a leasing operation that he had built from one company with four employees to a group of 10 companies with 6,000 employees worldwide in a period of just six years.
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John Spano claimed to be worth $230 million, most of which he attributed to have been inherited from his wealthy grandfather Angelo; he claimed to own his $3 million University Park house free and clear.
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Pickett and Bettman were initially confident about John Spano, deeming him a lifesaver for the once-proud franchise.
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John Spano committed to keeping the team on Long Island and either renovate, rebuild or replace the aging Nassau Coliseum.
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John Spano paid for the team at signing with a loan from a syndicate of banks headed by Fleet Bank.
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John Spano promised Pickett the money would be wired out, showing him a letter from Lloyds Bank in London as proof; Pickett was satisfied and he closed the deal.
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John Spano let it be known that he intended to be a major player in the free-agent market that summer.
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At the request of Pickett, Bettman ordered John Spano to remove himself from day-to-day control of the Islanders and not use any team assets until the dispute could be settled.
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John Spano later told Sports Illustrated that a "significant" capital call and a payment on a note blew apart his plans to pay Pickett.
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Fischler learned that John Spano had promised the leader of an Islanders fan club a post as his "special advisor," but had not informed anyone within the Islanders organization about it.
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John Spano had offered the team presidency to former Islanders great Denis Potvin, but negotiations collapsed after John Spano apparently told Potvin that he was running out of money.
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Potvin later said that John Spano had almost no staff, which was unusual for a multimillionaire.
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Not long after John Spano's cover was blown, it emerged that John Spano was being sued by South African cookware maker Lenco Holdings.
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John Spano had reached a deal with Lenco to sell its pots and pans to American buyers at Nordstrom; however, Nordstrom had never sold cookware, and the department code on the purported Nordstrom purchase order was for women's coats.
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John Spano borrowed against the venture to secure a $1 million loan from Comerica.
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John Spano was being sued by a Dallas law firm after it was revealed that he had not paid them for legal work during his abortive run at the Stars.
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The Newsday report revealed that a federal investigation into John Spano's affairs was well underway.
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Prosecutors obtained evidence that John Spano had forged numerous letters from bank officials in his business dealings from 1995 onward.
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Fleet had relied on a letter from a Comerica senior vice president saying that John Spano was worth over $100 million.
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John Spano initially fled to the Cayman Islands, but eventually agreed to return to the United States.
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John Spano pleaded guilty to bank fraud on January 13,1998.
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John Spano was released in June 2004 on five years' supervised release and moved to a Cleveland suburb.
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John Spano was jailed for 51 months and released from prison on April 3,2009.
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John Spano pleaded guilty to charges of collecting almost $70,000 in commissions on fraudulent accounts in May 2015 and was sentenced to 10 years prison on June 17,2015.
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John Spano was ordered to pay more than $75,000 in restitution to Image First.
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The John Spano fiasco was highly embarrassing to the NHL, which was still reeling from revelations that former NHLPA head Alan Eagleson had lied to his clients and enriched himself by skimming off the union's pension fund.