Par Funding enforcer James LaForte sentenced to more than 11 years prison for fraud, attack on lawyer

James LaForte, a former loan finder and debt collector at Philadelphia-based Ponzi scheme Par Funding — one of the largest financial frauds in the region’s history — was sentenced Thursday to more than 11 years in prison for using violent, mob-style intimidation against people viewed as threats to the company headed by his brother.

LaForte, whose brother Joseph and sister-in-law Lisa McElhone, founded Par Funding in 2012, pleaded guilty last year to crimes including conspiracy, extortion, and obstruction.

Par Funding, which portrayed itself as a legitimate cash-advance lender but fraudulently took investors’ money, made predatory loans to desperate borrowers and routed millions to company executives even as borrowers defaulted under onerous terms.

James LaForte, 48, served in a role akin to a company attack dog, first recruiting borrowers into high-cost loans, then intimidating them into paying under threats of violence. He admitted to assaulting a lawyer in 2023 on a Center City street who was working on a court-ordered effort to sell a home owned by LaForte’s brother and raise cash to reimburse some of Par’s victims.

U.S. District Judge Mark A. Kearney said that for all of LaForte’s criminal conduct in the case — which included threatening to kick in people’s teeth or harm their children — the attack on the lawyer, Gaetan Alfano, was perhaps the most serious. The judge called it “cowardly thuggery” that threatened the U.S. legal system as he imposed a penalty of 137 months behind bars, followed by three years of supervised release, including a year of house arrest. It was the maximum sentence allowed under LaForte’s plea agreement.

“You have no respect for the law whatsoever,” Kearney told LaForte.

LaForte apologized for his actions, saying: “I shouldn’t have done what I did at all.” And he directly addressed Alfano, who testified about the attack and its impact. LaForte said his crime in striking the lawyer over the head with a flashlight on 19th Street in 2023 could be called much worse than “cowardly,” the word Alfano had used.

“I embarrassed myself and my family,” LaForte said.

The conspiracy involving Par began falling apart in April 2020, when the company, having paid millions to its founders and the companies they controlled even as loan payments lagged, stopped paying investors their monthly dividends.

In July 2020 federal Judge Rodolfo Ruiz in Florida put Par under the control of court-appointed receiver Ryan Stumphauzer, who has since been managing and selling Par properties and seizing assets from the LaFortes.

In a presentencing memo Jan. 21, Kearney found that the LaForte brothers and Par chief financial officer Joseph Cole Barleta had “enriched themselves” and other insiders by taking more than $150 million out of the company for personal use, even as the business lost money.

He concluded that the trio had caused investors losses totaling a net $288 million.

A judge in Florida separately ruled that Par was a Ponzi scheme, in which the company’s owners extracted millions to support their luxury lifestyle — and paid old investors with new investors’ cash, to keep the conspiracy running.

For the crimes he pleaded guilty to in Philadelphia, and given his previous criminal history, LaForte agreed to prosecutors’ recommendations that he face a sentence of at least nine years and two months in federal prison, and to pay restitution of $2.5 million.

LaForte’s lawyer, Thomas Mirigliano, said in court filings that his client regretted his actions. “For the first time, he fully comprehends the profound impact of his actions on all who cared for him,” he wrote.

LaForte, the lawyer said, had not been motivated by “greed, personal animosity, or an attempt to exert power” over others. Rather, he said, LaForte acted from “an overwhelming sense of frustration, fear, and desperation” as he watched the court-appointed receivership sell Par Funding-related assets and “evict” his brother and sister-in-law from their Main Line home.

That “misplaced loyalty” fed LaForte’s actions, the lawyer said.

But Par Funding had already been shut down by the government, the founders’ assets seized, and grand jury criminal indictments delivered when LaForte attacked the lawyer and threatened Abbonizio and his family, noted Kearney, the judge. “You weren’t trying to protect your family. It was too late for that,” he said. “You were vindictive.”

Joseph LaForte; his wife, Lisa McElhone; former Par conspirators Joseph Cole Barleta and Perry Abbonizio; debt collector Renato Gioe; and others are to be sentenced on charges related to the fraud later this spring.