A Dutchess County con man was arrested on June 11 for allegedly committing a scam in Utah while under government supervision for a New York fraud conviction.
An FBI agent and other law enforcement agents arrested Joseph Mori at a residence in Wappingers Falls, around 6 a.m on June 11.
The arrest warrant was issued on June 4 by federal court in Salt Lake City, Utah, based on a grand jury indictment accusing Mori of money laundering conspiracy and engaging in a monetary transaction involving more than $10,000 derived from unlawful activity.
In the Utah case, a local municipality had reached a settlement with the victim of a swimming pool accident. Conspirators working with Mori pretended to represent the victim, according to the indictment, and “inserted themselves into communications between the parties’ lawyers.”
The conspirators, who are not identified in the indictment, arranged for $779,600 in settlement funds to be transferred to a bank account held by Global Office Group Inc., a Wappingers Falls firm founded by Mori in 2019.
Mori received the funds in October 2023, according to the indictment. That was about six months after he was released from prison in New York and while still serving three years of supervised release.
Mori allegedly used the funds to pay personal expenses, such as credit card bills, gas, self-storage and restitution to victims in his previous criminal case.
In 2020, Mori was charged with wire fraud in New York. He owned and operated Partnercare Funding Inc., a loan brokerage business in Wappingers Falls that targeted small businesses throughout the United States and abroad.
Mori claimed he could obtain commercial loans for a 1% fee paid in advance, and that he would refund the fee if he was unable to obtain a loan.
“In reality, Mori had never been able to obtain a loan for a client,” the charging papers state, and he failed to refund most of the fees.
He received $451,410 from 35 clients and returned about $97,000, for a net gain of $354,410.
Mori pleaded guilty.
In April 2022, U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Karas sentenced Mori to a year and a day in prison, followed by three years of supervision, in White Plains federal court. Mori surrendered to the Bureau of Prisons on June 21, 2022.
But from the time Mori was charged in 2020, to his sentencing and imprisonment in 2022, and up to February 4, 2025, all documents in the New York case were kept sealed.
Though no specific explanation for the secrecy is given in the now un-sealed records, Mori’s lawyer, Gordon Mehler, revealed a clue.
“The docket … is sealed due to my client’s ongoing cooperation,” he stated in a November 2020 letter to judge Karas, and “my client’s cooperation efforts are going smoothly.”
