MEDIA COURTHOUSE — A Swarthmore man who beforehand pleaded responsible to embezzling from the Marine Corps League was sentenced to 10 years of probation and ordered to pay almost $50,000 restitution.
Former Delaware County Marine Corps League Detachment #228 Commandant Alan Staniskis was additionally ordered to carry out 240 hours of group service and don’t have any contact with the league or its members beneath the sentence handed down Friday by Frequent Pleas Court docket Choose G. Michael Inexperienced.
Staniskis, 52, entered open pleas to fees of theft by illegal taking and conspiracy in June. He had additionally been charged with theft by deception, receiving stolen property and extra conspiracy counts, however these have been dismissed beneath the plea settlement reached by Deputy District Legal professional Douglas Rhoads and protection counsel Michael Malloy. The plea left sentencing as much as the decide.
Staniskis was charged in February 2020 with former chapter paymaster Kera Kiss, who confronted equivalent offenses for allegedly serving to Staniskis cowl up the thefts.
Kiss, 42, of Mullica Hill, N.J., entered into the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program for nonviolent first-time offenders final month and can serve 12 months of probation.
The audit
The scheme was uncovered in October 2019, when Delaware County Detective Steven Cortese was contacted by Upland Detective Cpl. Andrew Nicoll.
Arrest affidavits point out the league seen lacking funds throughout an inside audit accomplished in September and decided roughly $37,000 was lacking. The audit had searched information between April 2018 and March 2019.
Investigators reviewed the nonprofit group’s monetary information at Wells Fargo Financial institution and found Staniskis had made $53,183 value of improper withdrawals by examine or by money. League members advised detectives that nobody was permitted to make money withdrawals from these accounts.
The investigation additionally uncovered 4 suspicious checks written to Staniskis from the league. Although the checks had been endorsed by correct league members, they’d been clean once they have been signed and Staniskis later wrote out the quantities to himself.
The unraveling
Additional investigation revealed Staniskis transferred $1,400 from a league account to a mortgage account in his identify in Might 2019, and his private checking account confirmed deposits made across the identical time of the withdrawals from the league accounts totaling $15,338.
In an try and cowl up the lacking cash, Kiss allegedly entered fraudulent balances within the ledger that might make different league members consider the accounts have been sound. The fund stability entered by Kiss confirmed a better quantity than was truly within the account, in accordance with the affidavits.
Each defendants have been launched on unsecured bail of $25,000 apiece.
Courtroom wrap-up
Rhoads mentioned Friday that the entire quantity of restitution was $48,683, which might be paid to the league’s insurance coverage firm because it was an indemnified loss.
He urged Inexperienced to impose commonplace vary sentences of three to 12 months on each offenses, noting this was a sequence of thefts from a league that was bounded collectively by service to their nation.
Rhoads mentioned Staniskis was positioned ready of belief that he exploited and violated for his personal acquire. That violation left different league members exhausting pressed to consider Staniskis was ever a Marine and questioning if his commandant place was not stolen valor, Rhoads added.
“It isn’t only one theft, one mess-up, one mistake and one felony scienter,” Rhoads mentioned. “Fairly, to perform a large-scale theft of roughly $50,000, it took repeated acts over a number of years the place that responsible scienter is repeated repeatedly.”
Malloy requested that the decide impose a noncustodial sentence resulting from his consumer’s medical points. He mentioned Staniskis is a disabled veteran who acquired a medical discharge in 1994, and has been dwelling solely on these advantages and Social Safety incapacity ever since.
Staniskis must spend the primary 90 days of his probationary sentence on digital house monitoring and supply a DNA pattern to state police. Inexperienced mentioned Staniskis may petition the courtroom for early termination if he has no violations after seven years and restitution has been paid in full.
“It is my intention to present you each alternative to make the Marine Corps League entire because of these thefts,” Inexperienced mentioned. “That is my expectation. I acknowledge additionally that you’ve a incapacity and I acknowledge that the group service in all probability, by purpose of that incapacity, could be sedentary in nature. Nonetheless, I count on the group service to be accomplished in whole.”
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