Peter DiRosa used to be the mayor of Manchester, Connecticut. Today he’s serving a 57-month federal prison sentence for wire fraud. DiRosa was convicted in Portland’s federal court in 2013 for his role in defrauding Frank Jablonski out of $540,000. This week, the First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence.
Facts of DiRosa’s case
Frank Jablonski invested $600,000 with DiRosa and his business partner, Thomas Renison. The money was to help fund construction of a golf resort and spa in Hungary. Jablonski was told that the funds would stay in an escrow account to act as collateral for a land transaction. He was also told to expect a $400,000 return within six months plus interest and fees, and that the project was backed by a celebrity advisory board and other substantial funding.
The Hungarian development project was real, but there was no board, the other funding fell through and Jablonski’s money was transferred out of escrow with $225,000 going to DiRosa’s wife’s bank account. Jablonski ended up losing all but $60,000 of his investment and facing significant fees and taxes for withdrawing retirement funds early.
The appeals court decision
On appeal, DiRosa argued that the trial judge should have acquitted him before the case got to the jury. He claimed that did nothing fraudulent: his development may have been a lousy investment, but it was real and he was not responsible for the Jablonski investment. The trial evidence showed that it was Renison who had a prior relationship with Jablonski, identified him as a potential investor, made the pitch that convinced him to invest and signed the loan documents.
The appeals court didn’t buy it. First, they noted that sufficiency of the evidence appeals are rough sledding:
We “need not believe that no verdict other than a guilty verdict could sensibly be reached, but must only satisfy [ourselves] that the guilty verdict finds support in a plausible rendition of the record.” We have described the barriers to challenging a motion for acquittal as “daunting.”
They went on to say that, even if DiRosa was not directly involved in lying to Jablonski, he’s still guilty:
He claims that his participation was merely incidental to causing Jablonski to wire the money and that it was Renison who did all the heavy lifting. Even assuming this to be the case, it was certainly reasonable for DiRosa to foresee – and indeed it was what he hoped for – that the misrepresentations Renison made would result in the foreign wiring of funds for his Hungarian real estate development project.
And so, DiRosa’s conviction stands. Thomas Renison, who may have played a more substantial role in the fraud, has been bared from working with investments or securities, but he got immunity in exchange for his testimony and has faced no criminal charges.
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