John Spano

John Angelo Spano Jr. (born May 31, 1964) is an American businessman and convicted fraudster. He is best known for briefly buying control of the New York Islanders franchise of the National Hockey League (NHL) in 1996, before it emerged that he barely owned a fraction of the assets that he claimed to own. He deceived several banks into lending him enough money to initiate the purchase, believing he could use the fraudulently purchased team itself as an asset to get the remaining tens of millions of dollars needed to cover his fraud. He subsequently pleaded guilty to bank and wire fraud and served a federal prison sentence. Spano was convicted of 16 counts of forgery in Ohio in 2015 and served his sentence in Grafton Correctional Institution; he was released in November 2024.