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From serving the Vatican to serving time. This is the path
that Anne Hathaway’s ex-boyfriend Raffaello Follieri will walk on, since he
decided not to appeal the court’s sentence of up to five years and three months
in prison for charges including wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy.
Follieri, 30, is an Italian businessman who posed as the Vatican’s
representative to the United States in order to get investors to think he could
buy, using his high-placed connections, Catholic properties at big discounts.
Instead, he was actually sending the money they gave him to foreign personal
bank accounts. Moreover, he used it to purchase a private jet and pay the $37,000-a-month
rent for a luxurious penthouse in Manhattan.
Shortly after his break-up with the leading actress in „The
Devil Wears Prada,” he was arrested by the FBI and ordered by the U.S. District
Judge John G. Koeltl to give back $2.4 million in cash, along with jewelry and
watches.
The prosecutors stated that his elaborate scam included keeping
ceremonial robes in his Manhattan office, telling investors he had been in
charge of the Vatican’s financial affairs and also claiming he had met the Pope
in person.
Raffaello Follieri was charged in June, when twelve criminal
complaints were filed against him. A court hearing in his case could take place
next Tuesday. Until then, he remains in custody in New York, unless he manages
to pay the bail that has been set for $21 million.
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