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Ottawa Citizen

Canadian conman flees U.S. sentencing after learning how long his prison term might be

Article content A Toronto-area conman skipped his sentencing hearing in a U.S. court, for helping swindle more than $21 million from hundreds of victims, after prosecutors alleged he kept scamming people even after his arrest and guilty plea. Article content Antonio Palazzolo, 67, did not appear in U.S. federal court in Cleveland on May 8, when he was expected to be sentenced for the large, sophisticated investment swindle pulled by a gang of Toronto-based conmen. Article content Article content What was supposed to be his long-delayed sentencing hearing after his guilty plea in 2022 turned into an abrupt five-minute session when Palazzolo failed to join Judge J. Philip Calabrese, two U.S. prosecutors and his own lawyer in court. Article content Article content Calabrese said an arrest warrant would be issued, making him a fugitive. Article content If Palazzolo had shown up, he would have heard prosecutors tell the judge that the U.S. government no longer supports a reduced sentence because 'he has continued to engage in similar fraudulent conduct since pleading guilty in this case,' according to a government memo filed in court a week before the hearing. Article content Prosecutors said Palazzolo kept pulling an almost identical fraud as the one he pleaded guilty to while he remained free in Canada on an unsecured US$20,000 bond while awaiting his sentencing. Article content As his hearing approached, three victims contacted U.S. authorities, two claiming he had ripped them off for big bucks and another that Palazzolo was trying to defraud him as recently as late April, the judge was told. Article content Article content One victim showed the government an invoice from Palazzolo for US$10,000 for a pink diamond dated April 24, according to court records. That's just two weeks before his scheduled court date. Article content Article content Palazzolo's sentencing in Ohio was scheduled after his wire fraud conspiracy conviction from his time as a crooked salesman with Paragon International Wealth Management, Inc., a Toronto firm where he went by the alias John Carson. He and other conmen duped victims in Canada and the United States into buy coloured diamonds for much more than they were worth. Article content The new allegations say that after a Toronto police raid on Paragon's Finch Avenue West telemarketing offices in 2018, Palazzolo kept tricking gullible investors into sending him huge sums for low-value stones using his own company, called Pavillion Diamonds International.