Fraud

Three people from South Jersey were to be arraigned this afternoon in federal court in Camden in connection with a $2.6 million time share mortgage fraud scheme, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey said. Ashley Lacerda, 32, of Egg Harbor Township, Francis Santore, 52, of Northfield and Brian Corley, 27, of Egg Harbor, were among 16 defendants charged on April 17 with a variety of offenses, including conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. Authorities said Lacerda, Santore and Corley worked for The Vacation Ownership Group and that the investigation revealed that from at least March 2009 to September 1, 2011, the defendants, often using false identities, telephoned owners of time-share vacation properties purchased through Flagship Resort Development, Wyndham Vacation Resorts Inc. and other time-share developers.

The owner of a bankrupt Montgomery County printing company pleaded guilty yesterday in a Connecticut federal court to being part of a scheme to defraud equipment-leasing firms. Thomas J. Becker, 43, of North Kingston, R.I., will be sentenced at a later date on one count of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering, said a U.S. prosecutor in New Haven, where the plea was entered. Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Clark, who is prosecuting the case, said that Becker, who still faced a maximum 25-year prison sentence and a $750,000 fine, had agreed to cooperate with the government's continuing investigation.

Contractor Ralph Leonard has begun paying back at least $442,000 for his role in the Kinsley Landfill fraud case. Leonard, who received probation in December after pleading guilty to theft by deception, made his first $100,000 payment Dec. 22, said Christopher Florentz, a spokesman with the state Attorney General's Office. Under a forfeiture order, filed Jan. 4 in Gloucester County Superior Court, future payments of $100,000 are due Dec. 22 in 1991 and 1992. In addition, Leonard must pay at least $142,000 in taxes owed to the federal and state government for 1983-85.

A prominent Villanova real estate developer and a senior executive of Royal Bank pleaded guilty to fraud yesterday in federal court in Philadelphia. The developer, Mark Alan Mendelson, 52, also pleaded guilty to bribing the banker, Joseph Zakorchemny Jr., 57, of Aston, a former Royal Bank senior vice president. In return for his help, Mendelson gave the bank executive $12,000 cash, a trip to a casino-hotel, and jewelry. Sentencing guidelines call for at least a year in prison, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Schwartz said.

Five years after making a courtroom apology for cheating people out of heirlooms and antiques, former Antiques Roadshow celebrity Russ Pritchard 3d admitted this week that he had done it again. Pritchard, 44, of Beach Haven, N.J., pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges that he defrauded six people who had entrusted him with paintings, jewelry, furniture and other items to sell on consignment from a shop in Bryn Mawr. "He never did what he promised to do," said Tracey Potere, an assistant district attorney in Montgomery County.

In 2006, a fire raged through the house in a rural, wooded section of Montgomery County where Paul and Monica Shay spent time on their days off. Weeks later, Paul Shay reported artwork and other items missing. According to the man who came to the rebuilt home in Douglass Township on Saturday night and shot the Shays and three others in the head - killing a 2-year-old boy - Paul Shay had conspired with the shooter in an insurance-fraud scheme related to the fire and missing art. Montgomery County authorities are trying to determine whether that's true, and they are now investigating whether the fire was arson.

SHAWN ANDREWS is an ungrateful fraud. Andrews, who was released by the Eagles in March, signed with the New York Giants a little over a week ago. On Friday night, the two-time Pro Bowl offensive lineman played in a preseason game against the Baltimore Ravens, and saw fit to diss the Eagles, a team that had stuck by him through injuries and a bout with depression. "It just felt good to run back out, even though I'm at my new home with the G-Men," he told the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. "I have to say it feels much more of a family atmosphere than what I'm used to in the past.

Local townships and companies trusted the laboratory to test their water for toxins. The federal government trusted it to look for harmful chemicals on the skin of tangelos and in the water that flooded New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. But Blue Marsh Laboratories Inc. of Douglassville, Pa., did not have the equipment to perform the tests, nor did it follow protocols to ensure accurate results, according to a federal indictment. Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged the lab and owner Michael J. McKenna with 84 counts of fraud and false statements.

In 1966, John P. Moscony became a salesman in the real estate business founded by his late father and helped build it into one of Southwest Philadelphia's busiest home dealers. But all the good will and reputation he once said he earned has come into question. Moscony, 45, and Thomas L. Cullen Jr., 43, his chief salesman, have been indicted by a federal grand jury here for allegedly reaping more than $600,000 in profits over a six-year period by fraudulently securing federal mortgage insurance for some 95 homebuyers whom he knew to be ineligible for government- insured loans.

Much like a fortune cookie, you never know what you're going to get when you invest in a foreign company that has gone public in the United States, and then start poring over the financial statements. That's what securities regulators and short-sellers are warning about companies such as Sino-Forest Corp. , Longtop Financial Technologies Ltd. , and other potentially fraudulent public concerns from China that have been raising capital in America. First, let's address how to avoid foreign-based frauds listed in the United States.

The U.S. attorney in Philadelphia charged Michael J. Smith, of Springfield, Delaware County, with participation in mortgage fraud that caused losses of $665,000 to lenders. Smith, a former mortgage broker, allegedly participated in a conspiracy with John C. Lucidi Jr. and Eric Maratea, both of whom are charged elsewhere, in a scheme to buy properties, mostly at the Jersey Shore, at inflated prices so that buyers could receive kickbacks of tens of thousands of dollars. Smith was one of the buyers, according to the four-count indictment.

A Dela­ware County man was charged Thurs­day with join­ing a mort­gage fraud con­spir­a­cy that resulted in losses of more than $600,000. Federal prosecutors said Mi­chael J. Smith, 31, of Spring­field, was a mort­gage bro­ker for companies in West Chester and New­town Square, who schemed with John C. Lucidi, Jr. and Eric Maratea, among others, to buy properties at the Jer­sey Shore at inflated prices so buyers could re­ceive kickbacks of tens of thousands of dollars.

HARRISBURG — After the latest scandal involving the Philadelphia Housing Authority, State Rep. Michael P. McGeehan wants to slow down the return of local control over the agency until federal authorities have finished multiple investigations. "We have no idea where these federal investigations are headed, how deep or broad they will run, or who or how many will be ensnared by their conclusion," McGeehan, (D., Phila.) said Tuesday at a news conference in the state Capitol. On Friday, an insurance broker, Kobie T. West, pleaded guilty to defrauding the PHA of $2.3 million in a scheme involving a housing authority accomplice.

Steal a million, serve a year: What's the price of investment fraud? If you are caught and convicted, count on being sentenced to about a year in prison for every $1 million you wrongly separated from clients, according to a Main Line ethicist's survey of a dozen local pyramid schemers jailed since Wall Street mega-fraudster Bernard Madoff got sent away in 2009. "There is a consistent standard," yet results vary with public outrage and other factors, says Julie Anne Ragatz, director of the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics in Financial Services at American College, the insurance and investment school in Bryn Mawr.

Remember Crazy Eddie, the electronics-store king who concocted one of the biggest public company frauds of the 1980s? Eddie Antar ended up in prison, but his cousin and onetime chief financial officer, Sam E. Antar, today advises federal and state law enforcement agencies about white-collar crime and trains them to identify and catch crooks. Often, the former CPA refers cases as an independent whistle-blower and teaches about white-collar crime for professional organizations, businesses, and colleges.

A Narberth man who owned and operated a company that processed dental claims for labor union health and welfare funds was convicted by a federal jury Tuesday of willfully filing false tax returns from 1999 through 2002. Jonathon Felix, 51, who owned and operated United Professional Plans, Inc., which received management fees on a per claim or per person basis to process claims and resolve disputes between labor union members and dental providers. Among the unions UPPI worked for was District Council 33 of AFSCME, which represents the city of Philadelphia's blue-collar workers.

Temple University has agreed to pay the U.S. government $412,474 to settles claims stemming from two fraud schemes by a hospital department chairman and a trio of plastic surgeons that netted more than $4.5 million. Dr. Joseph J. Kubacki, former Chairman of Temple's Ophthalmology Department, was convicted in August on 73 counts of health care fraud, 73 counts of making false statements, and four counts of wire fraud. Kubacki, also a professor at the medical school and an attending physician at Temple University Hospital, billed federal agencies more than $1.5 million claiming he had performed services at the hospital performed by residents when he wasn't there.

Three people from South Jersey were to be arraigned this afternoon in federal court in Camden in connection with a $2.6 million time share mortgage fraud scheme, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey said. Ashley Lacerda, 32, of Egg Harbor Township, Francis Santore, 52, of Northfield and Brian Corley, 27, of Egg Harbor, were among 16 defendants charged on April 17 with a variety of offenses, including conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. Authorities said Lacerda, Santore and Corley worked for The Vacation Ownership Group and that the investigation revealed that from at least March 2009 to September 1, 2011, the defendants, often using false identities, telephoned owners of time-share vacation properties purchased through Flagship Resort Development, Wyndham Vacation Resorts Inc. and other time-share developers.

FOOTBALL PLAYERS at North Carolina made up more than a third of enrollments in suspect classes within a department the school investigated for academic fraud. The school said Tuesday football players represented 246 of 686 enrollments (36 percent) in the 54 courses within the Department of African and Afro-American Studies between summer 2007 and summer 2011. Those classes lacked appropriate supervision and were called "aberrant" or were "taught irregularly" with limited contact between instructors and students, according to a university report released Friday.

In the 1960s, a Democratic ward leader took shoe boxes full of quarters to the polls in poor neighborhoods - "to pay off voters," a veteran election lawyer recalls. In 1993, a judge overturned a pivotal State Senate race because of hundreds of bogus absentee ballots. In last year's primary, dozens of polling places mysteriously recorded more votes in some races than the number of voters who'd signed in. All are examples of real or suspected vote fraud, Philadelphia-style.