A major loan shark has been sentenced to prison for squeezing scores of debtors— many of them immigrant Latino small business owners in Queens—by charging them usurious interest rates of up to 260 percent a year.
According to Queens District Attorney, Richard Brown the defendant ripped off more than 50 victims in Corona, Elmhurst, Flushing and Jackson Heights for more than $250,000.
Brown identified the defendant as Pasquale “Patsy” Fermo, 70, of 58 Whitman Drive in Red Bank, New Jersey, who was known to victims as “Mr. Pat.” The defendant was sentenced last week before Supreme Court Justice Joseph A. Grosso to a prison term of one to three years. The defendant pleaded guilty on April 18, 2002 to Enterprise Corruption under the State’s Organized Crime Control Act. The defendant also signed an agreement forfeiting $474,000 to the States of New York and New Jersey.
A co-defendant, Anna Ponce, 49, of 87-25 57th Road in Elmhurst, is awaiting trial. She is alleged to have assisted Fermo by collecting payments, keeping records of the loans and then delivering the proceeds to Fermo. Three other defendants previously have pleaded guilty and have been sentenced.
During the investigation, evidence was obtained through wiretap surveillance and the monitoring of Fermo’s cellular telephone as well as traditional investigatory methods. A court authorized search warrant executed on Fermo’s vehicle, a 1996 Buick Century, resulted in the recovery of usurious loan records. In addition, search warrants executed by New Jersey authorities on his Monmouth County, New Jersey house and a Summit Bank safe-deposit box resulted in the seizure of numerous usurious loan records and the recovery of a total of nearly $300,000 in cash. Civil forfeiture proceedings on various bank accounts held by Fermo, with estimated assets of approximately $200,000, are pending.
In pleading guilty Fermo admitted that he and his co-defendants ran the “Fermo Loan Shark Organization,” that its purpose included acquiring money illegally by engaging in loan sharking in violation of the criminal usury laws, that he loaned money through various locations in Corona, Elmhurst, Flushing and Jackson Heights at rates of interest to debtors or victims of more than 25 percent a year.
District Attorney Brown said, “The defendant preyed upon individuals who apparently believed that their loan requests to banks or other legitimate lending institutions would be rejected. He literally soaked his ‘clients’ for payments at usurious interest rates of up to 260 percent which brought him $250 a week in interest until a victim could manage a lump sum payoff of the principal. All of the victims were small business owners
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