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Judge on trial for concealing $300K from probate
YOUNGSTOWN
Suspended Mahoning County Judge Diane Vettori-Caraballo used more than $300,000 allegedly stolen from her deceased client to pay her credit-card debt, according to Tuesday testimony.
She appeared in county probate court Tuesday for proceedings relating to her alleged theft of more than $300,000 from the estate.
Attorneys presented opening statements in the civil-action case, in which Vettori-Caraballo and other co-defendants including her husband, Ismael Caraballo, and associates Cynthia Henry and Theodore Stalnacker, all of Youngstown, are accused of concealing assets from the estate of Dolores Falgiani after Falgiani died in March 2016.
The complaint, filed Nov. 6 by Douglas Neuman, attorney for the estate, alleges Vettori-Caraballo, who helped prepare wills for Robert Sampson and his sister, Falgiani – who took over Sampson’s estate upon his death – and Henry, whom Falgiani named executor of her will at Vettori-Caraballo’s recommendation, “worked in concert to gain control over” Falgiani’s assets, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash both Faligiani and Sampson hoarded – much of which was not logged in the probate court.
Vettori-Caraballo allegedly convinced Falgiani to sell her unneeded vehicles through Stalnacker at less than market value, while Vettori-Caraballo and Stalnacker took the profits, the complaint states.
The complaint also accuses Vettori-Caraballo and Stalnacker of removing more than $340,000 in cash and more than $10,000 in valuables from Falgiani’s Glenwood Avenue home after her death.
Neuman’s first witness, FBI special agent Deane Hassman, who investigated Vettori-Caraballo’s administration of the two estates, testified Vettori-Caraballo and her husband deposited $100,200 across 24 transactions at 15 different bank branches within the span of a month – all structured to avoid federal reporting requirements on deposits exceeding $10,000.
He said Vettori-Caraballo used it to pay about $58,000 on 35 different credit cards.
Vettori-Caraballo’s attorneys, Gerald Ingram and John Juhasz, waived their opening statements. Ismael Caraballo’s attorney, Robert Duffrin, said Neuman has no evidence to show Caraballo made any of those deposits and called for Caraballo’s release from the case.
Cynthia Henry’s attorney Franklin Malemud called the claim “overreaching” and said if trial evidence shows assets are missing from Falgiani’s estate, “they are assets [Henry] had no knowledge of.”
The probate case closely mirrors the federal criminal case against Vettori-Caraballo and her husband. They pleaded not guilty last month to stealing from the estate and then lying about it to the IRS. Both are due back in federal court in February.