An Old Forge man pleaded guilty Monday to federal money laundering charges.<\/p>\n
John Festino, 66, entered the plea before U.S. District Judge Julia K. Munley, according to the United States attorney\u2019s office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
Festino, a former field engineer employed by a multinational telecommunications company, devised a scheme to fraudulently obtain telecommunications equipment owned by his employer and resell the property to third-party buyers beginning in or about December 2024 and continuing through July 2025, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Brian D. Miller.<\/p>\n
Festino was a field engineer for Sprint in the Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre region. His service area ran from Binghamton, New York, to the Maryland\/Pennsylvania line \u2014 covering the Central Pennsylvania region, according to court papers.<\/p>\n
Festino advertised the sale of stolen equipment via the internet, including on eBay. In total, Festino received approximately $434,550 in his personal bank accounts from the sales of stolen equipment. During the scheme, Festino conducted a series of financial transactions involving the fraudulently obtained funds, including withdrawing large sums of cash and purchasing a new vehicle for $41,000.<\/p>\n
The value of the stolen equipment is approximately $2.2 million.<\/p>\n
The matter was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tatum R. Wilson is prosecuting the case.<\/p>\n
The maximum penalty under federal law for this offense is 10 years\u2019 imprisonment and a fine of $250,000. A sentence following the finding of guilt is imposed by the judge after consideration of the applicable federal sentencing statutes and the federal sentencing guidelines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Old Forge man pleaded guilty Monday to federal money laundering charges. John Festino, 66, entered the plea…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[46,201,182,139,16790,28,178,180,179,729],"class_list":["post-228751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-courts","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-old-forge","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228751","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=228751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}