Federal prosecutors revealed that a New Jersey man with connections to the Philadelphia mafia would serve four years in jail for his involvement in a predatory scam that involved collecting down payments for assets he falsely said he will fund.
Last September, Stephen Sharkey, 51, of Swedesboro, pled guilty to two fake mortgage-closing scams and one con job on behalf of a house seller snagging him more than $385,000 from his unsuspecting victims. When swindling his victims, Sharkey would use names to hide his true identity.
According to investigators, Sharkey conspired with an associate, Anthony Ambrosio, to persuade victims to make down payments on properties prior to closings. The two guys would inform their targets that they would completely fund the payments, but then pocket the money and create reasons for the transactions falling through.
In 2019, Ambrosio’s own brother-in-law was defrauded of $208,000 in one of the mortgage-closing scams.
Sharkey cut checks to ARMM Investments, LLC, a firm run by George Borgesi, a former associate of reputed Philadelphia crime boss Joey Merlino, as soon as he received the proceeds from that victim.
Both Sharkey and Borgesi were earlier found guilty in a federal racketeering lawsuit involving Merlino and some of his colleagues in Philadelphia’s La Cosa Nostra in the early 2000s. Borgesi was a capo, and Sharkey was a bookmaker, according to the complaint.
When the agreement with Ambrosio’s brother-in-law in 2019 fell apart, Sharkey and Ambrosio managed to get hold of a second victim to fund the mortgage. The victim transferred Sharkey $100,000, but the agreement fell apart after Sharkey used the money for his own purposes. Ambrosio persuaded the victim to give the seller an additional $25,000 to keep the deal alive, but the sale never got off the ground.
Sharkey admitted to wire fraud, identity theft, and money laundering charges. He was given a term of four years and one month in jail, three years of supervised parole, and a restitution payment of $296,000. As part of the plea agreement, he would still have to forfeit the same sum of money.
Ambrosio was sentenced to 17 months in jail last November after initially pleading guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy offenses.
