COMMENTARY
Donn Esmonde: Defrauder isn’t worthy of any mercy
Usually I can dredge up a speck of sympathy for even the worst of weasels. It gets easier when the convict in question is 82, looks like a kindly grandfather, walks with slow steps and seems overwhelmed by the world.
In this case, however, I am going to resist any temptation to probe for my soft spot. And I hope the judge who sentences Amherst scam artist Richard Piccoli— who Monday took a plea deal—is equally unsentimental. Despite outward appearances, this guy has a heart so dark that it would embarrass a lump of coal.
Piccoli targeted Catholic priests, ran ads for his phony investment business in church newsletters and misused the good will of God’s surrogates to fleece others in the flock. By the prosecutors’ count, Piccoli bilked as many as 800 people out of as much as $25 million over two decades in a classic Ponzi scheme. Incoming investors partly paid off older ones, and Piccoli funneled excess cash into his pocket and out to his kids.
That is, to my mind, ample reason for federal Judge William Skretny to nail Piccoli with nothing less than the minimum 19- year sentence. If it amounts to a life term, Piccoli has only himself to blame. Whoever writes the book on the Master Scammer should call it “Absence of Conscience.”
The bitter irony is, the stuff that will send Grandpa Greed to prison is not even the worst of what he did. No, to find the most despicable act pulled by the man with the morality bypass, I had to talk with John Reid.
Reid is the nephew of the late Ralph Sigl. Sigl was a broken man, alcoholic and incapable of handling his own affairs, when Piccoli and a bartender/witness appeared at his bedside at the VA Hospital in the early 1990s. In a story reported by The Buffalo News’ Mike Beebe, they saw a soft target—whom Piccoli had befriended at a Knights of Columbus hall—and moved in for the kill.
When they left the shattered man’s bedside, Piccoli was the new beneficiary of Sigl’s estate, worth about $800,000. Piccoli soon got control of the finances. By the time Erie County Surrogate Joe Mattina in 1999 finally pried Piccoli’s hands from the wheel, all but $80,000 of the money was gone. Sigl’s family got a dime for every dollar.
“I hope [Piccoli] rots in hell; prison is too nice for him,” Reid told me by phone from his North Buffalo home. “Let him live on the street, send him to some Third World country.”
Piccoli’s odious act with Reid’s uncle is separate from the scams to which he pleaded guilty Monday. In the case where he made Sigl’s money disappear, Piccoli claimed poverty and—despite an auditing attorney’s 1999 allegation that he was running a Ponzi scheme— walked away clean. It was one of a few warnings that authorities ignored about Piccoli, allowing him to claim another legion of victims.
Scamming a broken-down alcoholic to change his will on a hospital bed is, in my book, about as low as it gets. Piccoli’s top-shelf lawyers say that he is sorry for bilking folks and contend that he got in over his head. Anyone inclined toward sympathy should remember Piccoli’s carnivorous bedside manner with the helpless Sigl. That image ought to obliterate any trace of misplaced sentiment.
Reid, a self-described “middle-class guy” who works for the airlines, got a measure of satisfaction for his uncle’s victimization when the feds took Piccoli down. But the final punctuation only comes with the sentence.
“Piccoli has been stopped,” Reid noted. “But until he goes to jail, it does not address the carnage he caused for my uncle and a lot of other people.”
I do not care if this guy is 82 or 102. When it comes to sentencing, Piccoli should get no more mercy than he gave.
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