Man Tied to $100 Million NJ Deli Scam Gets 21 Months in Prison
(Bloomberg) -- A twice-convicted felon who helped orchestrate a scheme to inflate the value of a small New Jersey delicatessen to more than $100 million
(Bloomberg) -- A twice-convicted felon who helped orchestrate a scheme to inflate the value of a small New Jersey delicatessen to more than $100 million was ordered to spend 21 months behind bars. James Patten, 67, was sentenced by US District Judge Christine P. O’Hearn in Camden, New Jersey, on Tuesday, more than two years after he pleaded guilty to securities fraud and conspiracy in the case.
Patten and two others were charged in September 2022 with artificially inflating the price of two companies through manipulative trading, including Hometown International Inc. That company’s only asset was “Your Hometown Deli” in Paulsboro, New Jersey, just across the Delaware River from the Philadelphia airport. Hometown became infamous on Wall Street when David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital highlighted the company in an April 2021 letter to investors as an example of irrational exuberance in the market.
Einhorn noted that the deli barely had sales of $20,000 in 2019 and even less in 2020 despite reaching a nine-figure valuation. “The pastrami must be amazing,” Einhorn observed. Patten, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, pleaded guilty in December 2023, admitting that he worked with two other men, Peter L. Coker Sr. and Peter L. Coker Jr., to manipulate the companies’ stock prices through coordinated trading that created the false impression that there was real supply and demand for the shares.
Patten, who previously served time in federal prison for mail fraud, had faced as much as 20 years if convicted at trial over the deli scam. More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
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