{"id":228272,"date":"2026-06-25T22:57:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T22:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/228272\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T22:57:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T22:57:06","slug":"old-forge-man-pleads-guilty-to-money-laundering-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/228272\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Forge man pleads guilty to money laundering"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>John Festino pleaded guilty this week to money laundering charges.<\/p>\n<p>LACKAWANNA COUNTY, Pa. \u2014 A man has pleaded guilty to money laundering in Lackawanna County.<\/p>\n<p>According to the U.S. Attorney&#8217;s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, between December 2024 and July 2025, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnep.com\/article\/news\/local\/lackawanna-county\/lackawanna-county-theft-telecommunications-federal-court-cogent-communications-john-festino-old-forge\/523-ffd9fad0-775b-4cc2-bb8c-8a70946c27ea\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">John Festino,<\/a> a former field engineer for a telecommunications company, fraudulently obtained telecommunications equipment owned by his employer and then resold the stolen equipment to third-party buyers.<\/p>\n<p>In total, investigators say Festino received about $434,550 from the sales of the stolen equipment and made a series of financial transactions involving the funds, including withdrawing large sums of cash and even purchasing a new vehicle for $41,000.<\/p>\n<p>Festino&#8217;s former employer says the stolen equipment was worth $2.2 million.<\/p>\n<p>Festino faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Festino pleaded guilty this week to money laundering charges. LACKAWANNA COUNTY, Pa. \u2014 A man has pleaded&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-228272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}