New York Paralegal Blog

A Staten Island man was arrested earlier this morning on charges arising out of his alleged operation of a $12 million Ponzi scheme from 2007 to 2010. Joseph Mazella, the founder and president of the Great Atlantic Group, Inc., a Staten Island-based real estate and financial consulting company, was charged with securities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering in a federal indictment that was unsealed earlier today in federal court in Brooklyn. The case has been assigned to Chief United States District Court Judge Carol B. Amon. The defendant is scheduled to be arraigned later today before United States Magistrate Judge Lois Bloom at the United States Courthouse, 225 Cadman Plaza East, Brooklyn, New York. The charges were announced by Loretta E. Lynch, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Janice K. Fedarcyk, Assistant Director in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office. As alleged in the indictment, Mazella solicited investmen...

(USDOJ) WASHINGTON – A former Supreme Court Justice of the Third Judicial Circuit of the State of New York was charged today with attempted extortion and federal program bribery, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division announced. Thomas J. Spargo, 65 was charged in an indictment returned today by a federal grand jury in the Northern District of New York. According to the indictment, while Spargo was a state Supreme Court Justice in 2003, he allegedly solicited $10,000 from an Ulster County, N.Y., attorney who had cases pending before the judge. The indictment further charges that Spargo solicited the money by causing the attorney to fear that Spargo would use his official acts and influence to harm the attorney if he was not paid and, conversely, to help the attorney if he was paid. More...

BUFFALO, N.Y. (November 7, 2008) – Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the guilty plea of a Western New York home improvement contractor who repeatedly pressured an 88-year-old widow into paying more than $80,000 for home improvements that were never done or done in a way described by outside experts as “grossly substandard.” Bryan Boone, 47, of Kenmore Avenue in Kenmore, pleaded guilty to Grand Larceny in the third degree (class D felony) before Supreme Court Justice John L. Michalski in State Supreme Court. He faces up to seven years in prison and was remanded to the Erie County Correctional Facility pending sentencing on February 10, 2009. More...