NYC Bust

[peteyboxcars]

https://news.italy24.press/trends/1030010.html

Badalamenti in contact with Jackie D'Amico, sounds like Jackie is still active

Jackie has worsening emphysema and is on an oxygen tank these days.

[TSNYC]

New article covering Joe LaForte, and thorough investigation of Par Funding:


https://www.phillymag.com/news/2024/02/ ... l-scandal/

[Tonyd621]

New article covering Joe LaForte, and thorough investigation of Par Funding:


https://www.phillymag.com/news/2024/02/ ... l-scandal/

Dam, some balls on the LaFortes. They were some spoiled kids of a well known mobster. Well, maybe they were, but they certainly acted like they belonged. If they stayed away from all the attacking of govt officials/attorneys, they Grey area of the law might of helped them. But the frivolous spending, the chatter to undercovers, the assaults and the kick ups to the Gambinos...anyone have any idea how much time they are looking it?
Anyone know anything about them, thinking they might squeal? They were so brazen they had to know they were going to get locked up and be prepared for it.
Look it at Londonio, he is what, in his 40s and he is doing life and has not said a f*cking peep. You never know with people.

[TommyGambino]

New article covering Joe LaForte, and thorough investigation of Par Funding:


https://www.phillymag.com/news/2024/02/ ... l-scandal/

Damn, 300 million in real estate seized

[OcSleeper]

...anyone have any idea how much time they are looking it?

If convicted of all counts charged against them, the defendants face the following maximum possible sentences of imprisonment:  Joseph LaForte – 796 years; McElhone – 70 years; Cole– 415 years; and James LaForte – 615 years.  The defendants also face full restitution, a fine, and a period of supervised release and/or probation.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edpa/pr/pa ... erjury-and

Plus James LaForte has the Gambino November indictment to worry about too. Think he's looking at the most time in that too at 180 years.

[Tonyd621]

...anyone have any idea how much time they are looking it?

If convicted of all counts charged against them, the defendants face the following maximum possible sentences of imprisonment:  Joseph LaForte – 796 years; McElhone – 70 years; Cole– 415 years; and James LaForte – 615 years.  The defendants also face full restitution, a fine, and a period of supervised release and/or probation.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edpa/pr/pa ... erjury-and

Plus James LaForte has the Gambino November indictment to worry about too. Think he's looking at the most time in that too at 180 years.

Holy sh*t, the only thing is they are all closely related. The Par funding does not involve a large # of mob members that the feds might deem worth it to take down.

[Tasker]

New article covering Joe LaForte, and thorough investigation of Par Funding:


https://www.phillymag.com/news/2024/02/ ... l-scandal/

Interesting article. Read this today and came here to see if anybody was posting about it.

Any chance the Par Funding operation had more significant mob/Gambino connection than revealed so far? I know about the 1.5 mil LaForte allegedly gave to Lanni. That could be explained as tribute to his capo for something LaForte was earning thru his brother. Not necessarily a mob “controlled” operation. But ive only recently started looking into the details of the case

[TSNYC]

Wife of Par Funding founder strikes deal to plead guilty while two others charged in new indictment

Lisa McElhone, spouse of company founder Joseph LaForte, is the third defendant to admit guilt in the sprawling — and seemingly ever-widening — probe of the merchant cash advance business.

by Jeremy Roebuck

Published Mar. 22, 2024, 6:21 p.m. ET

The wife of embattled Par Funding founder Joseph LaForte has agreed to plead guilty in a case alleging she helped him hide more than $40 million he earned through the business cash advance company that authorities say operated more like a Mafia-style criminal enterprise.

Court filings Friday indicated that Lisa McElhone, 44, of Philadelphia, will enter a guilty plea at an April 16 hearing before U.S. District Judge Mark A. Kearney.

The specific charges to which she has agreed to admit guilt as well as the terms of any deal she may have struck with prosecutors remain unclear. Her attorney Alan S. Futerfas did not return requests for comment Friday.

Still, McElhone’s decision marks a significant milestone in the sweeping — and seemingly ever-widening — probe that has prompted Par Funding’s collapse and left her husband and his former business associates battling criminal prosecution and civil penalties on multiple fronts.

Already, two other Par Funding associates have pleaded guilty — Perry Abbonizio, a senior official at the company, and Renato “Gino” Gioe, a Gambino crime family associate who moonlighted as a debt collector for the company.

Also on Friday, prosecutors filed charges against two new defendants — LaForte and McElhone’s accountants — for purportedly aiding the couple in an array of tax fraud schemes.

According to the new indictment, Rodney L. Ermel, 70, and Kenneth Bacon, 58, both of Colorado, designed the complicated tax structure that helped LaForte and McElhone hide the millions he was raking in through his business, which offered quick loans at high interest rates to businesses deemed too risky to borrow from traditional banks.

Between 2013 and 2021, the accountant’s work allegedly helped LaForte and McElhone dodge millions they owed to the IRS and an additional money owed in state income taxes.

That fraud was achieved, prosecutors say, by arranging for LaForte’s Par Funding earnings to be paid to entities registered in McElhone’s name, understating the true value of those earnings, and lying on tax forms about where the couple lived.

For instance, though LaForte and McElhone lived mostly in Pennsylvania during that period, including in a $2.5 million Haverford home they bought in 2016, they filed their taxes as residents of Florida, which has no state income tax.

At various points, the couple told the IRS they were living at addresses that traced back to a law firm in Miami that had done legal work for McElhone, the offices of a Palm Beach real estate agent, and a $14 million home they purchased in Jupiter, Fla., after they first claimed it as their primary residence.

Those falsehoods, prosecutors say, helped the couple avoid more than $1.7 million in state taxes they owed to Pennsylvania between 2014 and 2019.

Meanwhile, McElhone was listed as the owner of Par Funding and various associated entities through which her husband was paid even though she had little involvement in their day-to-day operations.

The accountants allegedly set up that structure to hide LaForte’s role in the company. But it resulted in McElhone — whose spent her workdays operating Lacquer Lounge, a hip nail salon in Old City — amassing assets worth almost $800 million in her name, including an $8 million jet, a suite of luxury cars, and properties in Pennsylvania and Florida worth a combined $59 million, according to a financial statement made public in 2020.

LaForte and McElhone were so pleased by the money that Ermel and Bacon saved them that they showered the accountants with additional benefits including commissions for referring investors to Par Funding and a pair of Rolex watches worth $14,000, according to the indictment.

Attorneys for Ermel and Bacon did not immediately return requests for comment Friday. Both the accountants face charges including conspiracy, tax and wire fraud, and preparing a false tax return that could send them to prison for up to 20 years on the most serious count.

The new indictment also hit LaForte, 53, and Par Funding CFO Joseph Cole Barleta, 40, with counts related to that tax fraud, further complicating the increasingly dire legal predicament they’ve found themselves in over the past five years.

In 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Par Funding and its principals alleging they’d bilked investors in the company out of hundreds of millions of dollars by promising false returns and hiding LaForte’s past as a two-time felon.

He’d previously served prison time in 2006 in New York for overseeing a $14 million Ponzi scheme and in 2009 for running an illegal offshore gambling operation — convictions that should have barred him from publicly trading securities.

LaForte and Cole were then criminally charged in 2023 in an indictment that mirrored the SEC allegations and lodged new claims against them and LaForte’s brother, James, alleging they used mob-style tactics to collect debts from Par Funding clients who had fallen into default.

Prosecutors have accused the company of bombarding borrowers with aggressive collection efforts including public shaming campaigns, death threats and visits from muscled goons when they failed to pay up.


They’ve also charged the LaForte brothers with plotting to frustrate efforts to investigate their crimes — including by attacking an attorney working on the SEC case.

In a superseding indictment filed last month, the LaForte and Cole were hit with racketeering conspiracy charges, alleging they ran their company as a criminal enterprise since its inception.



Meanwhile, LaForte is awaiting trial in a separate gun possession case filed after FBI agents discovered four handguns, two shotguns, and a rifle while executing a search warrant at his home in 2020.

As a convicted felon, it is illegal for LaForte to own firearms, though he has maintained that his wife was the true owner of those weapons.

LaForte has entered not guilty pleas to all the charges against him.

He and his Par Funding business associates are set to stand trial on the racketeering charges in October.

Kearney, the judge overseeing all the Par Funding-related cases, has scheduled a December trial date for LaForte, Cole, Ermel, and Bacon in the tax fraud case.

[TSNYC]

Wife of Par Funding founder pleads guilty to hiding millions in tax fraud case

Lisa McElhone, 44, told a federal judge she dodged taxes owed in Pennsylvania by lying on tax forms about where she and husband, Joseph LaForte, lived.

by Jeremy Roebuck

Updated Apr. 23, 2024, 4:54 p.m. ET
Published Apr. 23, 2024, 1:12 p.m. ET

The wife of embattled Par Funding founder Joseph LaForte admitted this week to helping him hide millions of dollars he earned through the business cash advance company that authorities say operated more like a Mafia-style criminal enterprise.

Lisa McElhone, 44, of Philadelphia, told a federal judge Monday that she dodged taxes owed in Pennsylvania by lying on tax forms about where she and her husband lived. Though they spent most of their time at their $2.5 million Haverford home and, in his case, working out of Par Funding’s Old City offices, the couple claimed to be residents of Florida, which has no state income tax.

All told, federal prosecutors say the couple dodged more than $40 million in taxes owed to Pennsylvania and the IRS between 2013 and 2021.

But as part of a deal McElhone cemented in court Monday, she pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud tied to just one of those years, and prosecutors will recommend she spend less than 2½ years in prison when she is set to be sentenced in August.

McElhone’s attorney, Alan S. Futerfas, did not respond to requests for comment following Monday’s hearing. Her plea agreement with prosecutors does not require her to cooperate against her husband or any of their codefendants.

Still, McElhone’s decision to plead guilty marked another significant milestone in the sweeping — and seemingly ever-widening — probe that has prompted Par Funding’s collapse and left LaForte and his former business associates battling criminal prosecution and civil penalties on multiple fronts.

Already, two other Par Funding associates have pleaded guilty — Perry Abbonizio, an investment broker who worked with the company, and Renato “Gino” Gioe, a Gambino crime family associate who moonlighted as a debt collector for the firm.

Meanwhile, LaForte, a two-time convicted felon who launched Par Funding in 2011, has vowed to fight the dizzying array of charges prosecutors have filed against him, including counts spread across multiple indictments of racketeering, extortion, securities fraud, tax evasion, perjury, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and illegal gun possession.

His brother James and four others also face charges in the probe. At the same time, the company’s principals remain mired in a 2020 civil suit brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in federal court in Miami.

For her part, McElhone was always a lesser figure in federal authorities’ sweeping investigation of the company, which raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors by offering quick loans at low interest rates to businesses deemed too risky by traditional banks.

Though business incorporation documents listed her as Par Funding’s owner, prosecutors say she had next to nothing to do with its day-to-day operations. Her name on the papers was intended only to hide her husband’s involvement.

LaForte, 53, had twice served time in prison — in 2006 for overseeing a $14 million Ponzi scheme in New York and in 2009 for running an illegal offshore gambling operation — which should have barred him from trading securities.

But as Par Funding became wildly successful at raising money, the setup resulted in McElhone — who actually spent her workdays running hip Old City nail salon Lacquer Lounge — amassing an eye-popping collection of assets in her name, including an $8 million jet, a suite of luxury cars, and properties in Pennsylvania and Florida worth a combined $59 million, according to a financial statement made public in 2020.

Authorities say that by obscuring LaForte’s involvement and promising wildly inflated returns, the company was able to bilk investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars — even as it was squeezing the small businesses that took advantage of its loans by using mob-style collection tactics, including public shaming campaigns, death threats, and visits from muscled goons to pressure borrowers who failed to cover their debts.


But even as the millions from those efforts rolled in, LaForte and McElhone allegedly lay claim to even more by lying about their residence to avoid Pennsylvania’s state income taxes.

At various points between 2014 and 2019, the couple told the IRS they were living at addresses that traced back to a law firm in Miami that had done legal work for McElhone, the offices of a Palm Beach real estate agent, and a $14 million home they had not yet purchased in Jupiter, Fla.

In the specific count to which McElhone pleaded guilty Monday — tied to their 2018 taxes — the couple had been accused of underreporting their income to the state by $26.5 million, resulting in a tax loss to Pennsylvania of nearly $1 million.

McElhone will likely be ordered to pay back that sum plus penalties at her sentencing hearing in August.

Still, in court papers filed this week in connection with McElhone’s plea, prosecutors acknowledged her limited role in her husband’s alleged crimes. They noted she repeatedly told the couple’s accountants, who are also charged in the case, that she did not live in Florida as they claimed on her tax forms.

The accountants ignored those statements and prepared the couple’s tax forms claiming Florida residency.

McElhone, prosecutors said, signed and submitted them anyway.