Ex-fugitive in $100 million NJ deli case granted bail, but kept jailed as feds fight release

On March 29, Waldor granted Coker Jr.’s request for bail, overruling an argument by assistant U.S. attorney Shawn Barnes that he “posed a serious risk of flight.”

Waldor set Coker Jr.’s release bond at $1.5 million, to be secured by equity in five properties owned by his parents and his sister.

Waldor said that Coker Jr. could be released into the custody of his mother, Susan Coker. He would be subject to home incarceration at her and Coker Sr.’s Chapel Hill residence with electronic monitoring, barred from using the internet and forced to surrender all passports and travel documents.

But Waldor stayed the release order to give prosecutors the opportunity to challenge it with the district court judge who is handling the case.

On Monday, Barnes filed a brief arguing that Waldor’s decision should be revoked.

Barnes reiterated that Coker Jr. had given up his U.S. citizenship and that he has “extensive” links to foreign countries, as well as “access to large amounts of money, and minimal ties to the United States.”

The prosecutor noted that Coker Jr. has citizenship in St. Kitts, a Caribbean nation where he potentially has assets. He also stressed that Coker Jr. has $3 million in a foreign checking account in Hong Kong, as well property in Panama that is valued at $500,000.

“While $1.5 million, the approximate value of the collateral, sounds like a lot of money for an individual to put up for bail – it is a drop in the bucket for this defendant,” Barnes said.

Barnes also wrote that Coker Jr. had allowed his co-defendant Patten “to use a brokerage account in [Coker Jr.’s] sister’s name to commit match and wash trades” that were part of the alleged fraud scheme.

“Indeed Coker, Jr.’s sister” — the same one whose property would partially secure his release bond — “is referred to as ‘Individual-5’ in the Indictment,” Barnes wrote.

Coker Jr. also allowed Patten to use brokerage accounts in the names of Coker Jr.’s nephew and niece as part of the scheme, the prosecutor said.

Barnes said those facts show that Coker Jr. “put his family members in the middle of a significant large-scale fraud because it benefitted him personally.”

“Simply stated, the Defendant’s assertions that he would not flee because it would jeopardize his family members’ homes is unsupported by the record; in fact, it is actually refuted,” Barnes wrote.

“This Defendant does what is good for him, even if it means using a family member’s account to commit crimes or letting an elderly parent, who is far less culpable than the Defendant, answer for the lion’s share of their joint criminal activity,” the prosecutor said.

Barnes also argued that Coker Jr. stood to make tens of millions of dollars from a reverse merger of the deli company, but that windfall was thwarted because of negative news articles that exposed the fraud.

CNBC in 2021 published more than 20 articles detailing questions about the backgrounds of Coker Sr. and Patten, and others connected to Hometown International and E-Waste.

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/05/new-jersey-deli-defendant-peter-coker-jr-granted-bail.html