Nassau DA: Long Island Man Facing Foreclosure Used Phony Raffle Racket In Home-Peddling Scam, Clipping Victims Out Of $100K+

In Mineola, New York, WCBS NewsRadio 880 AM reports:

• It was too good to be true. A Long Island man is accused of selling more than $100,000 worth of raffle tickets for a million-dollar waterfront home, then reneging on the drawing and pocketing the cash for luxury vacations.

• The Nassau County District Attorney’s office arrested 32-year-old Scott Cicerone of North Babylon and charged him with scamming thousands of people out of $100,000. Cicerone was facing arraignment Thursday on 21 counts of petit larceny and one count of scheme to defraud. His attorney said Cicerone will plead not guilty.

• Authorities say Cicerone sold raffle tickets in 2009, promising to give the winner a $1 million lien free home in Massapequa.(1) The tickets were only $50 each. [...] But D.A. Kathleen Rice says the house was really in foreclosure and Cicerone instead used the ill-gotten gains to pay for a Mercedes and take trips to Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and California.

For more, see Long Island Man Charged In House Raffle Scam.

For the Nassau County DA press release, see Suffolk Man Charged With Scamming Victims Out of More Than $100K in 2009 Massapequa House Raffle Scam (Cicerone promised ticket-holders the chance to win million-dollar home; instead used cash for vacations).

(1) Cicerone advertised that the winner would receive the property lien free, never mentioning the $1 million lien on the house from the previously defaulted loan, but did qualify the raffle, however, claiming if they did not sell 30,000 tickets, the ticket buyers’ money would be 95% refunded, according to the Nassau County DA press release.