Piccoli gets 20 years for $25 million fleecing
Harold DiMarco, a 79-year-old retired salesman from Lancaster, said he was under so much stress from losing his life savings and from having introduced friends to invest with Richard S. Piccoli that he suffered a heart attack in January.
Lu Tracy, 69, of Rochester, was in Georgia looking at a retirement home on a lake near Atlanta when she got a call that her life savings disappeared in Piccoli's Ponzi scheme. She had to move back North.
Carl Bell, 64, a retired factory worker from Franklin, Pa., who lost savings accumulated from 37 years on the job, told a federal judge that Piccoli would have been hanged in a previous era.
Not a single word was spoken in Piccoli's favor Wednesday — even his lawyers were at a loss to explain his schemes — as U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny sentenced the 83-year-old Amherst man to a prison term that will all but guarantee he will die behind bars.
"You ran a shameful, disgraceful and rather despicable Ponzi scheme," Skretny told Piccoli in a lengthy tongue-lashing that had Piccoli's victims agreeing out loud. "It involved almost 30 years of scamming mainly the elderly and the religious community."
"It's time after all these years to pay the price," the judge added.
That price will be 20 years in a federal prison, Skretny told Piccoli, who stood before him as about two dozen of his 500 victims watched.
Skretny was not persuaded by the arguments of defense attorneys Joel L. Daniels and Richard T. Sullivan, who asked the judge to consider a prison sentence of less than seven years so that their client might be released before the time that actuarial tables estimate he will die.
"You are the wolf in sheep's clothing," Skretny told Piccoli.
Skretny told Piccoli he should read the victims' statements to the court in his prison cell.
At least 100 people, the judge said, had reported that their finances were in ruins because of him.
Piccoli, a short, hunched-over man who looks to have aged since his arrest in January 2008, put on a pair of reading glasses before he read a short statement to Skretny.
"I really care about all the investors. I want them to be paid," Piccoli said. "I let so many people down."
Skretny wouldn't let Piccoli get away with that remark.
There were no investors, the judge told him, that was a lie, because Piccoli didn't invest their money.
Piccoli advertised in church bulletins and religious publications guaranteeing returns far higher than any legitimate investments could produce and used members of the clergy to recommend others.
But rather than invest the money in second mortgages, he used new money to pay off those he had fleeced before.
Piccoli cited a business loss as the reason he cheated his investors. He should have shut down the company, he told the judge, but hoped that a new opportunity would make everyone whole.
Instead, Piccoli continued to haul in the money, $31 million alone since 2002. Authorities believe that Piccoli's victims altogether lost as much as $25 million.
The amount that will be repaid them through court-ordered restitution has yet to be determined, prosecutors said, but as much as $7 million was seized from Piccoli's bank accounts, and more money will be coming from property Piccoli turned over to the government.
Under federal sentencing guidelines, Skretny could have sent Piccoli to prison for as little as 19 years and seven months or as long as 24 years and five months. The guidelines are only advisory, and the judge had the right to choose a sentence outside them.
He went with the high end, sentencing Piccoli to 20 years on a mail fraud charge and another five years for tax fraud. The sentences will run concurrently.
Piccoli was taken away by federal marshals immediately after the court session and will be held in a jail until he is assigned to a federal prison.
Daniels, who represented Piccoli, while Sullivan represented his Gen-See Capital Corp., said he believes that Piccoli is genuinely sorry for his victims.
Ever since he was arrested early last year, Daniels said, Piccoli's sole intent has been to plead guilty and help the victims get some of their money back.
"I think if he could have been allowed to walk around the courtroom, shake every victim's hand and make a personal apology, he would have done it," the defense attorney said.
Judging from the anger of those who came to court Wednesday, that probably would not have been a good idea.
"I couldn't talk to him because I probably would hurt him or something," said Bell, a plain- spoken fireplug of a man.
According to court officials, federal prisoners can get a maximum of 54 days a year cut off their sentences for good behavior. Most prisoners wind up serving at least 85 percent of their sentence.
Under those calculations, Piccoli will serve a minimum of 17 years. The earliest release date he could get would be in 2026, when he would be more than 100 years old.
"There will be no appeal," Daniels said. "With this sentence, the only way Richard will ever get out of prison is with a sheet over him."
His victims said he deserved every year he got.
"This man took everything I had," Bell, the retired Pennsylvania factory worker, told Skretny. "One hundred and fifty years ago, we would have just taken him out and hung him."
Outside the courtroom later, Bell said he wasn't joking when he made his remark to the judge. He said he invested $58,000 with Piccoli about five years ago, after reading Piccoli's advertisement in a church bulletin.
"He took every cent I saved for my retirement. He took 'er all," Bell said. "I have a heart condition, and I'm a diabetic. My wife and I [now] live off Social Security."
Like many of the victims, Bell found it difficult to control his anger as he talked about Piccoli. He also said he has hard feelings toward Piccoli's secretary, who he feels was also in on the scam.
"Every time I'd call the office, she'd say, "Business is going great!' " Bell said, even when the stock market was plummeting.
Gretchen L. Wylegala, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, later told investors that Piccoli's longtime secretary, Kathleen "Kitty" Fuoco, had not benefited from his crimes and had cooperated with investigators.
But Wylegala also said she expects Fuoco would be charged criminally.
"The length of his sentence was enhanced by the fact that he had more than 250 victims, the fact that he used sophisticated means to commit the crime, the fact that he abused people's trust and that his crimes put more than 100 people in danger of insolvency," Wylegala said.
Not one of Piccoli's friends — eight wrote favorable letters to the judge — and not one of his four grown sons and daughters showed up to support him at the sentencing. He is a widower.
According to Daniels, some of the stolen money went to Piccoli's children. Daniels said he wrote letters to them, asking if they could return the money so it could be added to the restitution fund for the victims.
"They told me, in so many words, to get lost," Daniels said. "As far as those kids are concerned, [Piccoli] can go twist in the wind."
Could any of Piccoli's relatives face criminal prosecution for keeping stolen money?
Criminal charges are unlikely, Wylegala said, but she said Piccoli's sons and daughters could lose money in the ongoing forfeiture case that is being pursued by prosecutor Richard D. Kaufman.
"We do believe two of his offspring got some of the proceeds from the criminal activity, totaling $158,000," Kaufman said. "As we've said in our court papers, we believe this money should be returned to the victims."
Tracy, the Rochester woman who was forced to move back from her Atlanta retirement, asked Skretny why Piccoli was allowed to hire top attorneys like Daniels and Sullivan.
Daniels said neither he nor Sullivan has yet been paid, and their request for attorneys' fees, once denied by Skretny for lack of billing records, is now pending.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which filed a civil suit against Piccoli and Gen-See Capital, has opposed the request for attorneys' fees. An SEC attorney said the property that Piccoli wanted to use to pay his attorneys was bought with investors' money.
It wasn't just the victims who lost money. Piccoli also stole money that they had planned to pass on to their children. One woman in court said she was there to represent her 89-year- old father, who invested with Piccoli after getting to know him at the Knights of Columbus.
"He has six grandchildren, and that money was going toward their college tuition," said the woman who asked to remain anonymous. "My father is just sick about it."
mbeebe@buffnews.com and dherbeck@buffnews.com
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