Par Funding founder’s brother charged with attacking attorney investigating firm assets

The founders of Par Funding, the Philadelphia-based cash-advance company at the center of an alleged $500 million financial fraud, have spent years in and out of courtrooms fighting to hold onto assets the government says they should have to give up to repay the investors they bilked.

Last week, federal authorities say, one member of the company made a less sophisticated effort to affect the outcome.

Prosecutors on Monday charged James LaForte — brother of Par Funding founder and CEO Joseph LaForte — with a broad daylight attack on an attorney who has been working to identify LaForte family assets for possible seizure to satisfy a $191 million court judgment entered against them last year.

Investigators said he sneaked up behind the lawyer — Gaetan Alfano, a partner at the Center City firm of Pietragallo Gordon Alfano Bosick & Raspanti LLP — as he left his offices at 18th and Market Streets on Feb. 28 and then struck him in the back of the head with a metal object.

The assault left Alfano with injuries that required seven staples to his skull and an MRI scan, according to charging documents filed Monday.

LaForte, 46, now stands charged with counts of retaliating against a witness and obstruction of a court proceeding — felonies punishable by up to 25 years in prison.

FBI agents arrested him Monday outside his brother’s Haverford home. He said little during a brief initial appearance in federal court, and his attorney, Thomas S. Mirigliano, did not return calls for comment.

Prosecutors have signaled they hope to keep LaForte detained until his trial as a wider criminal probe of Par Funding continues to unfold and could lead to additional charges.

So far, that investigation has produced two guilty pleas — one from Par Funding’s managing partners, Perry Abbonizio, and another from Renato “Gino” Gioe, an enforcer for the company.

And in court filings last month, authorities said Joseph LaForte; his wife, Lisa McElhone; and the company’s chief financial officer, Joseph Cole Barletta, had conspired to bilk investors in the firm, though no charges have been filed against them for that crime.

(They charged Joseph LaForte in 2020 with unrelated gun offenses, which he has vowed to fight at trial.)

For James LaForte’s part, prosecutors painted him in court filings Monday as no stranger prisons — or strategically deployed violence.

Working as a supervisor at Par, they say, he threatened small business owners with physical violence on more than one occasion for failing to repay money the company had advanced them.

The LaFortes’ business made its profits by raising billions from investors and then loaning it out — often at high interest rates — to cash-strapped smaller companies unable to secure loans from traditional banks.

As part of his role, prosecutors said, James LaForte supervised and encouraged Gioe — a body builder and reputed mob associate of New York’s Gambino crime family — who admitted in court last year that he’d used mob-style extortion tactics, including threatening to “stick a fork” in the head of one borrower and vowing to cut off the hands of another, in an effort to recoup debts owed to Par.

And before he became involved in his brother’s company, LaForte had spent years in and out of prison himself for other fraud and extortion schemes.

In 2006, both he and Joseph LaForte were convicted of a larceny and money laundering scheme in New York in which they defrauded more than 30 homeowners out of $14 million by falsely holding themselves out to be attorneys representing banks in real estate transactions.

Four years later James LaForte was sentenced to three years in prison for conspiring to commit arson as part of an effort to collect another debt.

He served another stint behind bars in 2012 — this time 17 months — after a conviction in New York for operating an illegal gambling business.

Despite that extensive record — and at least in part due to his association with his brother’s company — authorities say LaForte had managed to successfully bounce back.

He “lived a life of luxury, residing in expensive high-rise apartments in Manhattan, driving high-end cars, and having large amount of money at his disposal,” wrote FBI Special Agent John F. Murray in an affidavit filed in federal court Monday.

Investigators say his latest crime — the attack on Alfano last week — stemmed from his efforts to help his brother hold onto his own significant wealth.

In 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Par Funding, Joseph LaForte, McElhone and others, accusing them of selling unregistered securities and alleging they’d defrauded company investors out of more than a half-billion dollars by playing down the high default rate among Par’s borrowers.

Last year, a federal judge in Miami entered a $191 million judgment against Joseph LaForte and McElhone and has tasked a court-appointed receiver — Florida-based attorney Ryan K. Stumphauzer — with identifying company and personal assets that could be sold off to help satisfy that debt and repay bilked investors.

Alfano has represented Stumphauzer since the receivership started in 2020 and has been deeply involved in efforts to investigate the LaFortes’ holdings.

Last year, he and other lawyers for the receiver asked the Miami court to hold Joseph LaForte and McElhone in contempt for spending millions in what they believed to be Par Funding proceeds on lawyers to defend them in court — money the receiver said should have been spent on repaying the company’s victims.

As part of that court dispute, James LaForte, who was not a party to the original SEC suit, submitted an affidavit saying he had secured the funds his brother was using to pay for his legal defense by borrowing from friends and using money from a separate bar business he owns.

“I did all of this because I love my brother and sister-in-law and wanted to help them,” LaForte wrote at the time.

At the time, the judge declined to act on the receiver’s request. But the receiver’s efforts to recoup money from Joseph LaForte have continued — most recently with a remote court hearing last week in which lawyers discussed the sale of his Haverford home, which was listed to help satisfy his debts to the court.

It was after that hearing, while Alfano was leaving his office, when he was suddenly attacked.

FBI agents say they later recovered surveillance video from nearby businesses showing James LaForte — dressed in a dark hoodie and wearing a black knit cap, surgical mask, and gloves — running up behind the attorney and then fleeing the scene.

He dumped his black jacket in a trash can and then hopped in a taxi to an address just south of 23rd and Walnut Streets, according to the charging documents.

Alfano declined to comment on the incident when reached on Monday. Attorneys familiar with the case said he is expected to return to work soon.

LaForte remains in custody pending a bail hearing scheduled for Thursday.