CAMDEN, N.J. – A New York man was sentenced today to 300 months in prison for engaging in illicit sexual conduct with a 12-year-old girl and falsely claiming he had cancer in order to defraud victims out of $150,000.
Joseph Anthony Caracciolo, 50, previously pleaded guilty to a four-count information charging him with traveling in interstate commerce to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor, committing that offense while being an unregistered sex offender with a duty to register under state and federal law, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
According to the documents filed in the case and statements made in court:
Caracciolo admitted that on numerous occasions between June 2012 and August 2012, he travelled to New Jersey and Pennsylvania to engage in sexual intercourse with a then 12-year-old-girl, identified as “Victim 1” in the information. During this time, Caracciolo was not registered as a sex offender as required by his 1993 rape conviction in the Superior Court of Hampden County in Springfield, Massachusetts.
In July 2009, Caracciolo became romantically involved with a woman, identified in the information as “Victim 2,” with whom he had a child. Caracciolo admitted that he asked Victim 2’s parents to help pay for his cancer treatments, even though he wasn’t actually diagnosed with cancer. From December 2011 through August 2013, Victim 2’s father wired Caracciolo more than $150,000. Caracciolo also admitted that during this time, he used the identity of “Anthony Scibelli,” a Massachusetts man who died in 1998, to perpetuate the fraud.
Following the entry of Caracciolo’s guilty plea before Judge Bumb in January 2016, Caracciolo sought to withdraw his guilty plea in January 2017. At a hearing on Caracciolo’s motion to withdraw his guilty plea, Caracciolo admitted under cross-examination that he has lived a life of lies, including by telling people that he was a pediatric dentist and a celebrity chef, conning and deceiving women from coast to coast, selling sports memorabilia on eBay that he knew was not authentic, and selling fake cellphones and stereos.
In addition to the prison term, Judge Bumb sentenced Caracciolo to serve a lifetime of supervised release.
