Wire Fraud

TRENTON - A Bucks County woman has admitted stealing more than $400,000 from Dow Jones & Co. Federal prosecutors say Jacqueline Bucco, 32, of Bensalem, faces up to 20 years in prison when she is sentenced Oct. 13. Bucco pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal complaint charging her with wire fraud. She admitted she accessed a dormant internal system that contained company funds and transferred money to three bank accounts she controlled. Bucco worked at the Dow Jones office in Monmouth Junction for about two years before leaving the firm in March.

For years, Bob Landau has fought the system here, crusading against what he perceives as the ills of township government and school district policies. Some hail him as a reformer; others call him a pest. But his years as an activist stood Landau in good stead this month when he pleaded guilty to federal wire fraud charges. Instead of sending Landau to jail - he could have faced five years in prison - U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle 3d sentenced him to five months in a halfway house, to be followed by five months' house arrest.

A Camden County criminal investigator's romance with a mortgage broker has cost her her job and could send her to prison for obtaining a fraudulent loan, officials said. Asha Ritchards, 31, of Sicklerville, appeared yesterday in U.S. District Court in Camden, where she tearfully pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and admitted she lied on loan applications for a house her then-boyfriend used as a rental property. "She fell in love with this guy. He's a smooth-talking, handsome guy," defense attorney Leonard S. Baker said.

The former president of a Blue Bell insurance brokerage accused by fellow executives of absconding with the company's money was charged in federal court yesterday with stealing $600,500 in cash and fleeing to the Cayman Islands in 1995. David G. Bockius, 33, back now and living in Springfield, claims the money was stolen from him in Jamaica, Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard W. Goldberg said after the charges were announced. The prosecutor said Bockius was arrested May 16 and released five days later after putting up a real-estate bond that included his house, his father's house and a 1964 Corvette.

A pair of brothers who operated a fleet of ambulances in Bucks Co. pleaded guilty today in defrauding taxpayers of more than $2.6 million. Aleksandr N. Zagorodny and Sergey Zagorodny operated the Feasterville-based MedEx Ambulance Inc. from 2007 through 2012. Federal prosecutors said the Zagorodny brothers ran their seven ambulances like a fleet of taxis, unnecessarily transporting patients who they knew were able to walk and then submitting false claims to Medicare and Medicaid.

A Cinnaminson man pleaded guilty today in a scheme involving fraudulent applications for $1.2 million in mortgage loans, said Paul J. Fishman, the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey. John Fabey, 47, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in federal court in Camden. The government said Fabey recruited a "straw buyer" for condominium units and single-family houses even though Fabey knew the person would not qualify for mortgages. Fabey then "caused fraudulent mortgage loan applications in the name of the straw buyer and supporting documents to be submitted to mortgage lenders," the U.S. Attorney's office said.

  The U.S. Attorney's Office announced five additional charges Tuesday against charter school founder Dorothy June Brown and three former administrators for defrauding the schools. The superseding indictment charges Brown, 75, of Haverford, and Joan Woods Chalker, 74, of Springfield, Delaware County, with two counts of wire fraud and one more count of obstruction of justice. The grand jury alleged that the wire fraud and obstruction occurred as part of schemes to defraud charter schools that Brown had founded of $214,095.

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.

Two brothers who operated a Feasterville ambulance company, MedEx Ambulance Inc., pleaded guilty to overcharging Medicare by $2.5 million for the transport of kidney patients to dialysis who could have gotten there safely by other means, United States Attorney Zane David Memeger announced Tuesday. The brothers, Aleksandr N. Zagorodny and Sergey Zagorodny, pleaded guilty to all charges in a 41-count indictment charging them with health care fraud, false statements in connection with health care matters, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, the prosecutor's office said.

The arraignment for two high school friends of disgraced NBA referee Tim Donaghy is scheduled for this morning in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. Thomas Martino and James Battista, who were indicted by a federal grand jury earlier this month, will appear before Judge Carol Amon. Donaghy, a Drexel Hill native, pleaded guilty before Amon in August to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and transmitting betting information. He is to be sentenced April 18. Martino, 42, of Marcus Hook, is charged with lying to the grand jury in 2007.

JOHN McDANIEL, former campaign manager for City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, was sentenced yesterday to one year in federal prison for stealing more than $100,000 from her campaign account. McDaniel, according to documents filed in the case, has cooperated in local and federal investigations since his indictment in February. The question left unanswered: What did that cooperation entail? Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Gray declined to comment after the hearing about a letter he filed under seal with the judge.

Two close associates of State Rep. William Keller - his former administrative aide, Lorraine DiSpaldo, and his longtime business partner, Mark Olkowski - pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges Wednesday in separate cases in U.S. District Court. DiSpaldo, 58, an active figure in Democratic politics, told Judge C. Darnell Jones II that she misused $180,000 in state grants awarded to two South Philadelphia community groups. Instead of spending the money for the purposes specified in the grants - to purchase police communications equipment, secure vacant lots and buildings, and maintain the neighborhood around Dickinson Square at Fourth and Tasker Streets - DiSpaldo paid thousands of dollars in state funds to relatives and associates of her codefendant, suspended Traffic Court Judge Robert Mulgrew, and to lifelong friends of Keller, federal prosecutors said.

A Williamstown man was accused of defrauding mortgage lenders and the government by acting as a straw buyer in a multimillion-dollar mortgage fraud conspiracy involving $20 million in loans and 100 houses, most of them in Philadelphia, the U.S. Attorney's office in Philadelphia said Tuesday. According to federal documents, Mark Murphy, 47, allowed his identity to be used, along with false information about him, including false pay records, to qualify and receive a $324,000 loan on a West Philadelphia property.

IOWA STATE said Tuesday that coaches and staff made dozens of improper recruiting calls from 2008 to 2011 and it has asked the NCAA to levy a punishment of 2 years of probation. The university said it reported the "inadvertent" violations to the NCAA in November 2011. It said an "exhaustive" review of 3 years of telephone and text messages discovered that noncoaching staff members made 55 impermissible phone calls while coaches made 24 improper calls. In other college news: * Tulsa officials say they have accepted an invitation to join the soon-to-be-renamed Big East Conference beginning in 2014.

In the Region Guilty pleas in Medicare fraud   Two brothers who operated a Feasterville ambulance company, MedEx Ambulance Inc. , pleaded guilty to overcharging Medicare by $2.5 million for the transport of kidney patients to dialysis who could have gotten there safely by other means, United States Attorney Zane David Memeger announced. The brothers, Aleksandr N. Zagorodny and Sergey Zagorodny, pleaded guilty to all charges in a 41-count indictment charging them with health-care fraud, making false statements in connection with health-care matters, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit health-care fraud and wire fraud, the prosecutor's office said.

Two brothers who operated a Feasterville ambulance company, MedEx Ambulance Inc., pleaded guilty to overcharging Medicare by $2.5 million for the transport of kidney patients to dialysis who could have gotten there safely by other means, United States Attorney Zane David Memeger announced Tuesday. The brothers, Aleksandr N. Zagorodny and Sergey Zagorodny, pleaded guilty to all charges in a 41-count indictment charging them with health care fraud, false statements in connection with health care matters, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, the prosecutor's office said.

A pair of brothers who operated a fleet of ambulances in Bucks Co. pleaded guilty today in defrauding taxpayers of more than $2.6 million. Aleksandr N. Zagorodny and Sergey Zagorodny operated the Feasterville-based MedEx Ambulance Inc. from 2007 through 2012. Federal prosecutors said the Zagorodny brothers ran their seven ambulances like a fleet of taxis, unnecessarily transporting patients who they knew were able to walk and then submitting false claims to Medicare and Medicaid.

Patrick Giblin pleaded for "one final chance" when he wrote to a federal judge in 2009 asking for a reduction in his prison sentence, so that he simply "could do the right thing. " "I will not let the court down," the self-professed gambling addict penned to U.S. District Judge Robert B. Kugler, who had sentenced Giblin to 15 years in 2007 after Giblin admitted that he had romanced women to scam thousands of dollars. Two years later, Giblin wrote that he had been a model inmate, ready for release and to observe rules and curfews.

Patrick Giblin pleaded for "one final chance" when he wrote to a federal judge in 2009 asking for a reduction in his prison sentence, so that he simply "could do the right thing. " "I will not let the court down," the self-professed gambling addict penned to U.S. District Judge Robert B. Kugler, who had sentenced Giblin to 15 years in 2007 after Giblin admitted that he had romanced women to scam thousands of dollars. Two years later, Giblin wrote that he had been a model inmate, ready for release and to observe rules and curfews.

His victims were elderly, relatively unsophisticated and extraordinarily generous. Each received a phone call from someone they believed was their grandson. The "grandson" said he had been arrested in Canada for drunk driving and desperately need money to pay legal expenses. With the story, Anthony Oluwole Ojo, 44, successfully defrauded more than 120 worried grandparents, many from the Philadelphia area. His take: $643,503.97. Ojo, of Toronto, Canada, pleaded guilty in May 2012 to three counts of wire fraud.