Man sentenced to prison for fraud, again
A Gastonia man is headed to federal prison for fraud for the second time.
Joseph A. DiBruno Jr., 54, was sentenced Wednesday to two years in prison followed by two years of supervised release for bank fraud, according to Dena J. King, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina.
U.S. District Judge Frank D. Whitney ordered this sentence to be served consecutive to the remaining term of DiBruno’s federal prison sentence stemming from his 2008 federal fraud conviction.
According to filed documents and statements made in court, in 2008, DiBruno was sentenced to more than 21 years in prison after pleading guilty in the Western District of North Carolina to conspiracy to defraud the United States, money laundering conspiracy and concealment of assets.
On April 8, 2020, DiBruno was approved for placement on home confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, the Federal Bureau of Prisons calculated DiBruno’s estimated release date as June 2025. Court records show that, after his release to home confinement in May 2020, DiBruno obtained or attempted to obtain loans from at least two financial institutions, based on fraudulent statements and false information he submitted on loan applications.
For example, on one loan application, DiBruno falsely claimed that he had been employed as director of Data Analytics by a company listed as M.R.S., that he earned an average monthly salary of up to $8,000, and that he had lived at the residential address listed on the application for over four years, all of which was untrue. According to court documents, between May 2020 and June 2021, DiBruno submitted at least five fraudulent loan applications to two financial institutions seeking funds totaling more than $120,000.
In pronouncing the sentence, Judge Whitney stated that DiBruno received a “windfall” under the CARES Act but got “right back in the game” and had “a serious history of committing fraud” and “never learned his lesson.”
On April 6, 2022, DiBruno pleaded guilty to making false statements to a credit union. He is currently in custody and will be transferred to a federal facility.
This article originally appeared on The Shelby Star: Man sentenced to prison for fraud, again
