Prison food instead of pizza
US District Judge Edward Kiel has sentenced a former New Jersey pizzeria owner to three years in prison for tax evasion and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) fraud.
Judge Keil also ordered Marcello DiPietro III to pay restitution of $2.7m under a prior sentence he received in Camden federal court.
fraudulently obtaining pandemic relief funds
The former owner of Marcello’s Ristorante & Pizzeria in Evesham was convicted of fraudulently obtaining pandemic relief funds. DiPietro confessed in December 2024 to making false applications to the PPP between April and October 2020.
According to court records, DiPietro is also banned from gambling after his release from prison.
Evasion and gambling
The restaurateur also admitted to evading income taxes and making false statements to PPP overseers, the US Small Business Administration (SBA).
DiPietro’s two-year term for “making false statements to the SBA will run concurrently,” according to the New Jersey Courier.
Judge Kiel’s order that DiPietro serve five years of his sentence on supervised release comes with a post-custody condition that bans him from “casinos, buying lottery tickets, and other forms of gambling.”
The convicted ex-restaurateur must also take part in a mental health program that could provide “gambling, domestic violence and anger management, or sex offenses-specific treatment.”
DiPietro’s $2.7m restitution order comes via a $1.7m split to the SBA and several private lenders, and $1m going to the Internal Revenue Service.
According to the US Attorney’s Office for New Jersey, the businessman “falsely represented wages, revenues and employment levels at the restaurant and other firms.”
Empty claims
The federal prosecutor’s office said DiPietro received a $77,000 loan after an application described Marcello’s Ristorante & Pizzeria as an eight-employee company that he and his wife had operated since 2015. It turned out he owned or operated the establishment “since sometime in 2017.”
DiPietro landed another $150,000 loan in his wife’s name, with IRS records later showing the business hadn’t “filed any tax returns with the IRS” nor paid wages to any workers since at least 2014.
