A Superior Court Judge on Friday refused to dismiss six of the nine criminal charges facing Ronald Sollitto, the podiatrist who in 2004 lost a lengthy civil court battle over the multimillion-dollar estate of Spring Lake widow Madeleine Stockdale.
Superior Court Judge Ira E. Kreizman dismissed one count regarding the handling of a check but let stand six charges, which range from forgery and record tampering to neglect of an elderly person.
The two most serious charges Sollitto faces … second-degree counts of conspiracy to commit theft by deception, and theft by deception … were not included in Friday's proceeding.
Sollitto's attorney, John S. Furlong, said he will request a dismissal of those two charges next month, and Kreizman is scheduled to rule on that request March 31.
But following yesterday's outcome, Furlong was not optimistic about the prospects for dismissal in March.
"To quote Bob Dylan, "You don't have to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows,' '' Furlong said, citing Kreizman's refusal to dismiss the lesser charges.
The criminal charges were returned by a grand jury against Sollitto, 54, in November 2004, about four months after a civil court judge denied him any claim to the Stockdale estate. The estate, which includes a beach-block home on two lots in Spring Lake, is valued at approximately $6 million.
In that 2004 civil trial, Superior Court Judge Ronald Lee Reisner found that Sollitto and attorney Michael A. Casale, who prepared a Stockdale will that made Sollitto her primary beneficiary, conspired to wrest the widow's fortune from her.
In discrediting the will that made Sollitto the primary beneficiary, Reisner ruled the Spring Lake First Aid Squad is the legitimate heir to the Stockdale estate. Reisner's decision has been appealed by Sollitto and Casale, and oral arguments in that case could be heard by a three-judge panel in Trenton as early as the spring.
The subsequent criminal charges leveled against Sollitto totaled nine counts: conspiracy to commit theft by deception and theft by deception, which are second-degree crimes; forgery (a fourth-degree crime); falsifying or tampering with records (fourth-degree); four counts of theft (each third-degree), and neglect of an elderly person (third-degree).
Casale, 58, faces two criminal counts: conspiracy to commit theft by deception and theft by deception. He also is expected to seek dismissal of those counts next month.
If convicted of all charges, Sollitto faces a potential combined prison sentence of 45 years. Additional fines could total $400,000.
If Casale is convicted, he could face a prison sentence of 15 years and fines of $300,000.
In refusing to dismiss six of the seven charges facing Sollitto Friday, Judge Kreizman rejected Sollitto's claim that the grand jury that issued the indictments was not provided sufficient evidence by the prosecutor.
Nevertheless, Kreizman did dismiss one count against Sollitto, failure to make required disposition, in which the podiatrist was charged with failing to deposit a check in Stockdale's name into Stockdale's bank account.
Noting that Sollitto did not deposit the $3,000 check into his own personal account, and, in fact, never cashed the check at all, Kreizman said there was no evidence that Sollitto treated the check as his own, and he therefore dismissed the charge.
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