GASTON COUNTY, N.C. — A man in prison for a multimillion dollar fraud scheme got released due to COVID-19 concerns and is now accused of a new fraud scheme, taking out phony loans.
This is a suspect Action 9 has tracked since 2008, but when he was sentenced to more than two decades in prison, we thought we would never hear from him again. Jason Stoogenke said that with one taste of freedom, Joseph DiBruno Jr. is accused of going back to his old tricks.
Fraud was a family affair for the DiBrunos and typical of many stories Stoogenke covers.
There was an array of sham businesses -- including a Florida company that created a fat-free milk substitute, an online auction house in Belmont, a gold mine in New Mexico and even a local company creating a food supplement that could supposedly stamp out world hunger.
A lot of big promises were made and, like too many cases like this, a lot of families lost everything.
Some wiped out their life savings while others mortgaged their homes to send payments of $20,000, $100,000 or even a quarter million dollars to the DiBruno family.
In the end, Joseph DiBruno Jr. was ordered to pay back $3.8 million and was sentenced to more than 21 years in prison.
But then came the COVID-19 pandemic and like many other federal inmates, DiBruno filed for release from prison to escape the viral outbreaks happening behind bars.
Unlike most of those cases, his release was granted and he started his home confinement in a Belmont home. Prosecutors said it didn’t take long for DiBruno to get back into the family business.
His confinement started on May 7, 2020. By June 24, documents said he had sent off his first fraudulent loan application.
Over the past year, more applications followed, totalling just under $120,000.
Now, DiBruno is facing five felony fraud charges. He will be tried by federal judge Frank Whitney, the same judge who sentenced the DiBruno family the first time around.
Since DiBruno was given a rare release, Channel 9 looked over data from the U.S. sentencing commission. Only 21% of prisoners who asked for it were granted compassionate release in 2020. And the lowest rate of release was in the western district of North Carolina -- 2.1%.
Of 241 people who asked for compassionate release, DiBruno was one of just five who received it.
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