Former AIB currency trader John was formally sentenced today to seven and a half years in prison for hiding over $691.2 million in losses in one of the biggest banking scandals in history.
Rusnak, 38, was also barred for life from working for any federally insured banking institution.
Rusnak pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud last October, admitting that he devised a complex five-year scheme to collect salary and bonuses totaling $850,000 from 1997 to 2001 by hiding risky yen-dollar investments that went wrong and spun out of control.
Prosecutors do not believe Rusnak stole any of the hundreds of millions of dollars lost to AIB.
A federal indictment handed down last summer charged him instead with creating the impression of profitable trading activity with phoney bank telex documents, high-risk option contracts and off-balance sheet accounts with other institutions including Citigroup, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch.