Imprisoned Bay State Con Man Answers New Fraud Charges Of Taking Property Owners' Cash In Real Estate Deals & Allowing Mortgages To Go Into Default

In Fall River, Massachusetts, The Herald News reports:

• Joseph Pereira made another appearance in court Tuesday, doing what must be familiar by now: Getting arraigned. Pereira, 46, formerly of Rodman Street, was officially charged in Superior Court with two more counts of fraud. He was ordered held without bail — an academic point, since he is in prison, serving a three- to five-year sentence for fraud.



• Pereira watched without expression as prosecutor James McKenna provided an outline of the two new charges to Judge Thomas F. McGuire Jr. While he was out on bail, McKenna said, Pereira met with two people to offer his services as a financial advisor.



• He allegedly accepted $20,000 from a President Avenue resident, offering to take over payment of the man’s mortgage while negotiating a new mortgage at a lower interest rate. Pereira did not negotiate a new mortgage or pay the man’s mortgage with the money provided, according to McKenna. The man called police after learning from the bank that his home was facing foreclosure and reading in The Herald News that Pereira was going to jail for fraud, prosecutors report.



• In the second case, a Fall River woman hired Pereira to help her manage the finances of a pizza restaurant and an apartment building she owned, prosecutors said. Pereira took cash from the woman but did not use it to pay her mortgages as promised, McKenna told the judge. “It resulted in a default on the property and the properties were sold at foreclosure,” McKenna said.



• Pereira went to court on Sept. 30, 2010, and pleaded guilty to 15 separate charges of cheating and lying to friends and neighbors. He was sentenced to three to five years in state prison on that day.



• He was later convicted of more larcenies, admitting that on two occasions he accepted money to complete the sale of cars he did not own. Pereira is under court order to repay all of the victims in his schemes.



• Pereira has grown noticeably thinner during his time in prison. He did not speak during the arraignment, allowing his lawyer, Matthew Burke, to enter two pleas of not guilty on his behalf. The next court date is Dec. 27. It was scheduled as a conference for a possible plea deal.

Source: Con man Joseph Pereira arraigned on new fraud charges.