Crooked roofer gets 30 months in prison

A roofing contractor who pleaded guilty in connection with his role in a kickback scheme at Gwynedd-Mercy College was sentenced yesterday to 30 months in federal prison.

John W. Catalano, 59, of Bensalem, has been in federal custody since February 2008, after his arrest on conspiracy and loan-sharking charges in an unrelated matter.

He had been facing a guideline-range sentence of 41 to 51 months, but U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III showed leniency after prosecutors cited his cooperation in the kickback case.

The loan-sharking and kickback cases were combined and Catalano pleaded guilty in December.

Catalano said yesterday that his criminal misdeeds had been motivated by greed because he thought that his family needed material things to be happy.

Defense attorney Louis Busico said that Catalano's 17 months behind bars had changed him. "The separation from his family has demonstrated to John that family and health are more important than monetary things," Busico said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney David Fritchey said that Catalano was like a "Jekyll and Hyde character, a hardworking roofing contractor and family man who also goes out and acts like a one-man RICO." The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act is often used to prosecute mobsters.

The feds said that Catalano paid Gwynedd-Mercy's facilities manager a hidden kickback - a 20 percent markup on a winning bid - to do roofing work at the college.

The facilities manager, Harry Elwell, was charged separately last month with fraud, false tax returns and related offenses. He has pleaded not guilty.

Authorities also said that Catalano understated his taxable income in 2004 by more than $125,000.

Catalano paid the IRS $96,000 to satisfy his criminal tax liability and has agreed that $56,000 in cash that the feds seized when they searched his home be given to Gwynedd-Mercy toward $170,000 in restitution, Fritchey said.

When the feds arrested Catalano in the loan-sharking matter, they said that he and co-defendant Thomas J. Demilio III lent $115,000 in 2006 at exorbitant annual interest rates to co-defendant Melvin Michael Selkow, who offered the money to other borrowers at an annual interest rate of 156 percent. Selkow's loans went bad and he stopped paying back Catalano and Demilio. When the pair turned up the heat on Selkow, he went to the FBI.

Demilio was sentenced to 21 months behind bars; Selkow got three years' probation. *