Peter Coker Jr., left, receives a search warrant from police at his villa on the southern resort island of Phuket, Thailand, January 11, 2023.
Royal Thai Police Anti-Crime Division | AP
NEWARK, NJ – A former fugitive in a securities fraud case involving a New Jersey delicatessen company once valued at $100 million renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2019, prosecutors revealed Thursday as they asked a judge to disclaim releasing him on bail.
Peter Coker Jr. “he poses a serious risk of absconding and … there aren’t any conditions or combos of conditions that would ensure his appearance in future proceedings,” he said letter through the U.S. Attorney’s Office to a federal justice of the peace.
In the identical letter, prosecutors stated that Coker Jr. “made tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars” from an expected deli company reverse merger geared toward a “complex, long-term scam” spanning at the very least seven years that grossly inflated its stock price.
“The one reason why the defendant and his co-conspirators were unable to realize the final word goal of entering a reverse merger, which might have allowed for an enormous payout, was because of the negative press coverage that exposed their deception,” the letter reads. he said.
CNBC published dozens of articles in 2021 that exposed baffling consulting deals, troubled legal stories, and other issues involving people related to the deli company.
Coker Jr., who was extradited from Thailand last week, was attributable to appear in Newark federal court on Thursday afternoon for a detention hearing in a case that also indicts his father Peter Coker Sr. and a 3rd man.
However the trial was halted after prosecutors and defense attorneys Coker Jr. first learned that Coker Jr. is detained by the U.S. Crimes Agency. Criminal charges are pending in the U.S
This ICE blockade could stop Coker Jr. in prison, even when released on bail in a criminal case.
Prosecutors in their letter cited Coker Jr.’s access to to offshore funds, his citizenship from one other country, three many years of living abroad in Hong Kong, and the 20-year maximum possible prison sentence he faces if convicted, as reasons for concern that he will get away with charges.
“No evidence is more eloquent than the defendant’s own words,” prosecutors wrote.
They cited a legal statement from Coker Jr. on June 5, 2019, saying: “Although born and raised in the USA, I moved to Hong Kong in July 1992 for skilled reasons and established my roots and extensive social and family connections. ties here. I don’t have any intention of returning to live or work in the US and subsequently have decided to surrender my US citizenship.”
Coker Jr. Attorneys during his arraignment last week, they argued that he was willing to place up all the cash he had, about $4 million, and his parents’ home in North Carolina as collateral to secure bail in the case.
Coker Jr., Coker Sr. and James Patten were charged in an indictment on September 26 with a scheme to artificially inflate the stock prices of Hometown International and an associated shell company, E-Waste, to make them more attractive through a merger of partners to personal corporations.
Peter Cocker Sr. and his wife Susan Coker in front of the USA District Court in Newark, New Jersey on March 15, 2023.
Dan Manganese | CNBC
While the elder Coker and Patten were arrested in North Carolina and later released on $100,000 bail each, Coker Jr. he was a fugitive for months before being found and arrested by police at a resort in Thailand in January.
Cocker Jr. he got here there on a passport from the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, of which he has citizenship.
In their very own letter to Judge Edward Kiel on Thursday, lawyers for Coker Jr. they argued that he remained in Phuket, Thailand, after learning of the indictment because he was too ailing to travel.
Cocker Jr. he claimed to have been receiving medical attention for cirrhosis and hypoxemia prior to his arrest.
“Mr. Coker’s arrival in the USA would likely have been earlier had it not been for the intense health problems he faced in the period following the opening of the indictment against him,” his lawyers argued in the file.
“Mr. Coker prioritized looking for medical help in his area people in Thailand, moderately than immediately surrendering to authorities and risking being airlifted to the USA against doctor’s orders.”
The indictment alleges that, because of this of the plan, the stock price of Hometown, which owned only a small, loss-making delicatessen in Paulsboro called Your Hometown Deli, increased greater than 900% because of this of the alleged plan. E-Waste shares soared by almost 20,000%.
Each corporations have publicly disavowed their huge market valuations after CNBC exposed legal issues involving people related to the businesses, including Coker Sr.
The younger Coker was president of Hometown International for a time.
Gabrielle Fonrouge reported from Newark and Dan Mangan reported from Englewood Cliffs, NJ