Mammana in guilty plea

A wealthy Philadelphia businessman who gained fame by offering big rewards to help solve crime cases will soon be noted for something far less noble - cheating on his taxes.

Joe Mammana, 47, who has been in federal custody since December, intends to plead guilty on Tuesday to federal gun and tax-evasion charges, a federal prosecutor and his attorney said yesterday.

He had been scheduled to go on trial that day on a single count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Mammana was arrested and charged by criminal complaint in November after federal investigators found a loaded .357 Magnum in his nightstand while they were searching his Yardley, Bucks County, home for business and tax records.

The feds said in their plea agreement with Mammana that he failed to file a personal tax return and pay taxes on more than $416,000 in 2005, and intentionally evaded taxes and failed to file returns on more than $4 million of income from 2000 through 2004.

Mammana stipulated in the plea agreement that he owes Uncle Sam at least $400,000 in back taxes but not more than $2.5 million. He has agreed to pay the IRS at least $200,000 before sentencing.

Mammana has also agreed to forfeit the Magnum and a 2003 Lamborghini Murielago, both of which were seized by the feds in November. The feds valued the Lamborghini at more than $287,000.

Mammana could face from six to nine years in prison.

Jeffrey M. Lindy, Mammana's attorney, declined to be interviewed yesterday and said he would not make Mammana available to answer questions from the Daily News.

Mammana owns an egg-processing plant in North Philadelphia - Yardley Farms - that takes raw eggs and turns them into powdered, liquid and frozen egg products.

A source who didn't want to be identified said the business is no longer operating. Another law-

yer for Mammana, Martin L. Trichon, could not be reached for comment. The phone at Yardley Farms emitted a constant busy signal.

Mammana is better known as a brash, philanthropic crime-fighter who told the Daily News in February 2006 he had "done more than anybody else in this city" to help people.

Mammana, an ex-Marine, said then that he had been offering reward money - or "bounties" - for 10 years to the Citizens Crime Commission.

In 2005, that reward money helped cops crack two widely publicized murder cases.

One was the killing of Latoyia Figueroa, the young Philadelphia woman pregnant with her boyfriend's baby, and Patricia McDermott, an Elkins Park mother who was killed while walking to her job at Pennsylvania Hospital, moments after leaving a SEPTA bus.

Mammana attracted national attention in 2005 when he pledged $100,000 for information to help solve the case of Natalee Holloway, the missing Alabama teen who disappeared during a trip to Aruba in May 2005.

Although Mammana made a name for himself fighting crime, he has been twice convicted of drug charges, once for aggravated assault and once for sexual harassment.

The convictions date back to the late 1980s and early 1990s.

At a detention hearing before a federal magistrate last December, the feds alleged that Mammana had skimmed upwards of $3.2 million from legitimate business accounts and steered the money into his personal checking account or the accounts of businesses Mammana had set up to finance a lavish lifestyle. *