Former Middletown attorney Joseph Scali has lost his law license, livelihood, reputation and freedom, and now his home.
U.S. District Judge Nelson S. Román ordered the U.S. Marshals Service on Dec. 8 to take possession of his house on Balfour Road, West Hartford, Connecticut, and dispose of it according to the law, as punishment for his crimes.
The forfeiture order is for half of the value of the four-bedroom, five-bathroom, 3,547-square-foot house that Realtor.com estimates is worth $875,000.
In 2018, a federal jury in White Plains convicted Scali on 10 counts of frauds and swindles, tax evasion, structuring cash deposits, perjury and obstruction of justice.
Román sentenced Scali to seven years in prison and ordered him to forfeit $852,200 and pay more than $1.5 million in restitution.
Scali grew up in Middletown, Orange County, served as a congressman’s legal counsel and as an assistant district attorney, and then practiced law in Middletown.
By the time he was indicted in 2016, his reputation was already in shambles.
In 2013, a state courts grievance committee charged him with professional misconduct for misappropriating client funds. Federal and state courts disbarred him in 2014 and 2016, but he continued to make court appearances and file legal documents after his law license was suspended.
In the criminal case, he swindled a Pennsylvania client who had made a deal to sell land and mineral rights. The client gave him $1.5 million to be held in escrow, but instead of protecting the funds he spent much of the money on trips to Italy, England and the Cayman Islands; a fur coat; sports tickets; and mortgage payments for a vacation home.
He didn’t file personal and corporate tax returns from 2006 to 2012, according to court records. He split $32,400 into four deposits for the escrow account to evade the $10,000 currency reporting threshold.
Scali appealed the convictions but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found no errors and upheld the verdicts.
Last year, while imprisoned at the minimum security camp at Otisville, Scali applied to the Federal Bureau of Prisons for compassionate release and home confinement with his wife in West Hartford.
He was the sole caregiver for his elderly parents, he argued, he had substantial heath issues, and in prison he was in the highest-risk group for Covid-19.
Judge Román denied the request, citing lack of jurisdiction.
Scali, 72, resides at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. He is scheduled for release in February 2024.
