NEW ROCHELLE, NY — Michael Scoca, 54, of New Rochelle was sentenced to prison for scamming a family out of tens of thousands of dollars to build a new home which was never built.
Specifically, he pleaded guilty one count of Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, class E felony, in November. On Thursday (5/30), Westchester County Judge Barry Warhit sentenced Scoca to 1.5 to 3 years in state prison.
Michael Scoca claimed he was a licensed general contractor and convinced a Bronx family planning to move to Westchester that he would build them a new home. The defendant convinced his victims to provide him with a total of five separate credit cards to pay for materials and construction costs.
Rather than complete the construction of the home, Scoca instead used his victims’ personal identifying information and credit card numbers to pay for his own unrelated business and personal expenses, including a payment of nearly $3,000 for fees owed by the defendant to a New Rochelle yacht club, a purchase of over $1,000 in precious metal coins by the defendant, and multiple other purchases totaling thousands of dollars from local retail stores and deposited money into the defendant’s own PayPal account.
The defendant was ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $61,905.51 to the victims.
The case was prosecuted by the Investigations Division Assistant District Attorney Emily Rowe-Smith of the Economic Crimes Bureau.
Many people including myself have been robbed by this crook. Let’s hope he spends the whole three years.
Michael Scoca robbed us in a similar situation almost 20 years ago. We were one of several families at that time that he stole from. We all went to the DA and in the end, they felt he was a “bad businessman”. He has done this over and over again since then. Hopefully this time, I’ll never have to read about this crook ever again. The worse part is, he should’ve been stopped 20 years ago. The system is beyond flawed!
Please have facts before writting your articles!