Sex Offender, Impostor, Swindler Sentenced to 25 Years
A well-seasoned con artist and sex offender who enjoyed a summer of love with a 12-year-old girl in 2012, and who cadged at least $150,000 from his girlfriend's parents to treat cancer he didn't have, heads to prison for 25 years.
Joseph Anthony Caracciolo, 50, of New York, was sentenced in a Camden federal courtroom, following his unsuccessful attempt to withdraw his guilty pleas, according to the office of New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman. He's also required to remain under lifetime parole supervision.
Caracciolo pleaded guilty to counts of traveling in interstate commerce to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor, committing the offense while an unregistered sex offender with an obligation to register under state and federal law, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft.
According to information supplied by prosecutors, Caracciolo admitted numerous excursions to New Jersey and Pennsylvania for sex with the preteen between June and August 2012. Investigators said that he hadn't registered as a sex offender, as required under terms of his 1993 rape conviction in Massachusetts.
In July 2009, Caracciolo, under the alias of Anthony Scibelli, a Massachusetts man who died in 1998, struck up a relationship with a woman, who bore him a child. He invented a story about contracting cancer, authorities said, and swindled her parents for more than $150,000 between December 2011 and August 2013.
Caracciolo pleaded guilty in January 2016, then sought to withdraw the plea a year later. Prosecutors said that during cross-examination at his motion hearing, Caracciolo admitted that he "lived a life of lies," scamming women from Atlantic to Pacific, masquerading as a children's dentist and celebrity chef, and selling bogus sports memorabilia, cell phones and stereos on eBay.
In addition to the FBI, Fishman credited Egg Harbor Township police, the "Innocence Lost" Task Force of the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office, the Atlantic County Sheriff's Office, and the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin C. Danilewitz conducrted the governments' case.
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