March 11, 2017
A New York man who pleaded guilty to charges of sexual conduct with a minor and fraud was sentenced to prison Friday in Camden federal court.
Joseph Anthony Caracciolo, 50, was ordered to 25 years of incarceration for allegedly having sex with a 12-year-old girl and scamming his girlfriend's family out of thousands of dollars to treat a cancer diagnosis he didn't actually have.
According to federal prosecutors, Caracciolo admitted to travelling to New Jersey and Pennsylvania numerous times in 2012 to have sex with the minor.
During that time, Caracciolo wasn't registered as a sex offender despite being required to do so after a 1993 rape conviction in Massachusetts.
Caracciolo's criminal activity didn't stop there, according to authorities. From December 2011 through August 2013, he convinced the parents of his then-girlfriend to wire him $150,000 to pay for cancer treatments for a diagnosis he made up.
While conducting that scam, Caracciolo used the identity of “Anthony Scibelli,” a Massachusetts man who died in 1998. But that was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to his history of deception, according to prosecutors.
"Caracciolo admitted under cross-examination that he has lived a life of lies, including by telling people that he was a pediatric dentist and a celebrity chef, conning and deceiving women from coast to coast, selling sports memorabilia on eBay that he knew was not authentic, and selling fake cellphones and stereos," the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a press release.
In addition to his prison sentence, Caracciolo was given a lifetime of supervised release.
