Bankruptcy Tutor
Atiyeh sentenced to 18 months for bankruptcy fraud
Thursday, February 03, 2005
From staff reports
Allentown businessman and former professional athlete George Atiyeh will spend 18 months in a federal prison and pay $115,000 in restitution after pleading guilty to federal bankruptcy fraud charges.
U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Rich Manieri said Atiyeh was sentenced Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Eduardo C. Robreno in Philadelphia.
Atiyeh's attorney, Thomas Bergstrom of Malvern, Pa., did not immediately return a call for comment.
Atiyeh in October 2004 pleaded guilty to embezzling from a bankruptcy estate. In exchange, prosecutors dropped a charge of concealment of bankruptcy assets, Manieri said.
The embezzlement charge carried a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years parole.
Court documents say Atiyeh, who was a football and wrestling star at Dieruff High School, in Allentown, and at college and briefly played for the Philadelphia Eagles, concealed a property sale from a federal bankruptcy court in 1997 when his construction company filed for bankruptcy.
He secretly collected mortgage payments from the real estate deal over a three-year period, instead of handing the money over to the courts to pay off his debts, documents say.
All payments made after Atiyeh's corporation, Quality Realty Construction, filed for bankruptcy should have been placed in a special account controlled by the bankruptcy court, documents say.
In 1996, Quality Realty Construction sold a property to Regional Realty Holdings for $425,000. As part of the sale, Regional Realty agreed to pay Quality Realty $7,967 a month for 60 months from October 1996 to September 2001, documents say. Atiyeh, who was president and majority owner of Quality Realty, continued collecting the installment payments after he filed for bankruptcy.
The payments were deposited in the court-controlled accounts at First Union National Bank in Allentown, but Atiyeh would then withdraw the money from the accounts without authorization, documents say.
Between March 1997 and August 2000, Atiyeh withdrew about $280,000 from the account by check or ATM, documents say. He would then submit false reports to the bankruptcy courts to hide the withdrawals, documents say.
Atiyeh was indicted on the bankruptcy fraud charges in April, less than two years after he was convicted of unrelated charges for running an illegal sports-betting business called International Casino.
International Casino received up to 8,000 calls a month and took in more than $1 million in bets during a 14-month period in 1995 and 1996. The money was sent to Antigua or Jamaica in the Caribbean, where gambling is legal, but then wired to Atiyeh's accounts in Pennsylvania.
A federal judge in February 2003 sentenced Atiyeh to 15 months in prison and $4,600 in fines and court costs for the gambling charges.
Thursday, February 03, 2005
From staff reports
Allentown businessman and former professional athlete George Atiyeh will spend 18 months in a federal prison and pay $115,000 in restitution after pleading guilty to federal bankruptcy fraud charges.
U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Rich Manieri said Atiyeh was sentenced Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Eduardo C. Robreno in Philadelphia.
Atiyeh's attorney, Thomas Bergstrom of Malvern, Pa., did not immediately return a call for comment.
Atiyeh in October 2004 pleaded guilty to embezzling from a bankruptcy estate. In exchange, prosecutors dropped a charge of concealment of bankruptcy assets, Manieri said.
The embezzlement charge carried a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years parole.
Court documents say Atiyeh, who was a football and wrestling star at Dieruff High School, in Allentown, and at college and briefly played for the Philadelphia Eagles, concealed a property sale from a federal bankruptcy court in 1997 when his construction company filed for bankruptcy.
He secretly collected mortgage payments from the real estate deal over a three-year period, instead of handing the money over to the courts to pay off his debts, documents say.
All payments made after Atiyeh's corporation, Quality Realty Construction, filed for bankruptcy should have been placed in a special account controlled by the bankruptcy court, documents say.
In 1996, Quality Realty Construction sold a property to Regional Realty Holdings for $425,000. As part of the sale, Regional Realty agreed to pay Quality Realty $7,967 a month for 60 months from October 1996 to September 2001, documents say. Atiyeh, who was president and majority owner of Quality Realty, continued collecting the installment payments after he filed for bankruptcy.
The payments were deposited in the court-controlled accounts at First Union National Bank in Allentown, but Atiyeh would then withdraw the money from the accounts without authorization, documents say.
Between March 1997 and August 2000, Atiyeh withdrew about $280,000 from the account by check or ATM, documents say. He would then submit false reports to the bankruptcy courts to hide the withdrawals, documents say.
Atiyeh was indicted on the bankruptcy fraud charges in April, less than two years after he was convicted of unrelated charges for running an illegal sports-betting business called International Casino.
International Casino received up to 8,000 calls a month and took in more than $1 million in bets during a 14-month period in 1995 and 1996. The money was sent to Antigua or Jamaica in the Caribbean, where gambling is legal, but then wired to Atiyeh's accounts in Pennsylvania.
A federal judge in February 2003 sentenced Atiyeh to 15 months in prison and $4,600 in fines and court costs for the gambling charges.
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