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South Street check-cashing store hit with $4.8 million verdict for helping the former CEO of Philly Wholesale Produce Market embezzle funds

A jury found that check-cashing business DelBorrello Financial Services aided and abetted Caesar “Sonny” DiCrecchio in embezzling funds from the market.

Main corridor of Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market with arrow that points to location where donations are sorted. “Sharing Excess, a food-rescue organization launched by a rising Drexel senior in 2018, has set up shop in the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market, which sees about $1.5 billion worth of produce move through its gigantic warehouse in a year. Some of that produce, for one reason or another, goes to waste.” Photo taken on Friday morning July 29, 2022.
Main corridor of Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market with arrow that points to location where donations are sorted. “Sharing Excess, a food-rescue organization launched by a rising Drexel senior in 2018, has set up shop in the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market, which sees about $1.5 billion worth of produce move through its gigantic warehouse in a year. Some of that produce, for one reason or another, goes to waste.” Photo taken on Friday morning July 29, 2022.Read moreALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / Staff Photographer

A Philadelphia jury this month found that a South Street check-cashing service aided and abetted the former longtime CEO of the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market when he embezzled roughly $8 million, ordering the company to pay $4.8 million to the market.

The verdict was the latest legal consequence of a yearslong scheme by Caesar “Sonny” DiCrecchio to steal funds from the produce market he oversaw. He used some of the funds for charitable giving, but much more to enrich himself and those close to him.

For 20 years DiCrecchio was the head of the 700,000-square-foot Southwest Philadelphia facility that supplies many of the region’s restaurants, grocery stores, and neighborhood markets. DiCrecchio resigned from the company in 2018.

This month the legal focus wasn’t on the CEO but on a check-cashing business, DelBorrello Financial Services, that allegedly facilitated his fraud. Lawyers representing the family business argued that, like the market, it, too, was a victim of the actions of an estranged son who cashed DiCrecchio’s checks.

Starting in 2011, DiCrecchio, who pleaded guilty to his crimes in 2021, stole funds from the produce market by cashing checks that were intended for the company, or ones that he made out from the produce market to fictitious entities.

DiCrecchio cashed checks worth roughly $1.5 million at the DelBorrello check-cashing store on the 1000 block of South Street, which was owned by Peter DelBorrello Jr., court records say. His contact person at the store was the manager, and the owner’s son, Thomas DelBorrello.

DiCrecchio stopped using the service in 2016 but continued embezzling for two additional years.

A civil lawsuit, filed by the produce market in 2020 in Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia, alleged that the store and then-owner didn’t follow federal law that guards against financial crimes. It also accused Peter DelBorrello Jr. of failing to inform the produce market about DiCrecchio’s actions when he learned of them in 2016, allowing him to steal more funds.

DiCrecchio used some of the funds to pay for the trip of a cancer-stricken child and his family to watch the Eagles win a historic Super Bowl, and to host an annual Christmas shopping spree for children in a North Philadelphia homeless shelter.

DiCrecchio allegedly also used $1.9 million of the stolen funds to pay for the rent of his summer home in Stone Harbor, N.J., and diverted $1.7 million to family and friends, federal prosecutors said. He also spent $26,000 on boarding his granddaughter’s horses.

He pleaded guilty to federal embezzlement charges and is serving a 10-year sentence.

» READ MORE: Former CEO of Philly’s massive produce market gets 10 years in prison for nearly $8 million in theft, fraud

Thomas DelBorrello, who was the store manager cashing DiCrecchio’s checks, pleaded guilty in 2021 to failing to file “currency transaction reports” as required by federal law when he cashed checks for the CEO that were for sums larger than $10,000. He was sentenced to a year in prison.

In his federal sentencing hearing, Thomas DelBorrello told the judge that by not following federal law, he facilitated DiCrecchio’s theft going unnoticed.

“I understand how my actions directly contributed to the abiding and abetting of a criminal,” he said, according to a transcript of the 2021 hearing.

Thomas DelBorrello was not a named as a defendant in the civil lawsuit.

Philadelphia Wholesale lawyers used that admission to convince a Philadelphia jury that the check-cashing business owed financial damages for its role in the scheme, and that its owner at the time was also responsible.

From the witness stand in the civil trial this month, Peter DelBorrello Jr. told the jury that his family and business were also victims of his son’s criminal actions.

Michael Hollister, an attorney with Rothberg, Federman & Hollister who represented the financial services firm and owner in the civil case, declined to comment.

On Nov. 15, after a four-day trial, the jury reached a $4.8 million verdict finding that the cashing business and its then-owner aided and abetted DiCrecchio’s fraud.

John Stoviak, a partner at the Saul Ewing law firm who represented the market, said his client felt vindicated by the verdict.

But it could be a while before the market sees the money as an appeal process plays out.

Hollister filed a posttrial motion this week, asking the court to vacate the verdict and order a new trial. In the legal filings, he argued that the court was wrong when it allowed the jury to hold his clients responsible for the actions of Thomas DelBorrello.

“The repeated criminal actions of Thomas DelBorrello were not foreseeable and not within the course and scope of Peter DelBorrello Jr.’s business,” he said.