Del. developer pleads guilty to fraud, violating protected wetlands
A prominent Delaware real estate developer pleaded guilty Monday to bank fraud and violating the federal Clean Water Act during construction of a New Castle housing development, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Wilmington.
A prominent Delaware real estate developer pleaded guilty Monday to bank fraud and violating the federal Clean Water Act during construction of a New Castle housing development, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Wilmington.
Joseph L. Capano Sr., 74, admitted in U.S. District Court in Wilmington to using more than $146,000 from loans for the Riverbend at Old New Castle project to fund personal expenses, including buying $63,000 worth of jewelry, prosecutors said Monday.
He also admitted instructing employees and contractors to extend an entrance road for the development into federal wetlands - even after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had sent him a cease-and-desist letter, prosecutors said.
Capano faces up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine for the bank fraud charge, prosecutors said, and up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the charge relating to the Clean Water Act.
Capano's attorney, Eugene J. Maurer, Jr., could not be reached for comment Monday.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney said Capano is a cousin of Thomas J. Capano, who was convicted of murdering his mistress in 1996 and dumping her body into the Atlantic Ocean.
A prominent Wilmington attorney at the time, Thomas J. Capano shot and killed Anne Marie Fahey, 30, a scheduling secretary for Delaware's governor, after going to dinner at Panorama, a restaurant in Philadelphia's Old City.
Thomas Capano then used his brother's fishing boat to dump Fahey's body 70 miles offshore into a shark-infested area dubbed "mako alley."
His 1999 trial attracted international attention, even spawning books and a TV miniseries.
Thomas J. Capano died in state prison in Delaware in 2011.
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