Joseph LaForte, the founder of a Philadelphia cash advance company that raised a half-billion dollars from hundreds of investors before the government called it a fraud, says he isn't asking federal authorities to return his $6 million private jet to him, or the millions in stocks they also seized 2 1/2 years ago.
Instead, he and his wife, Lisa McElhone, maintain that they just want the Cessna 680 and stock proceeds used for a good cause: to help repay losses investors suffered in their former firm, Par Funding, a lender to businesses too risky to borrow from traditional banks.
But the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is skeptical of the Haverford couple's purported motivekfks as it tries to collect a $197 million federal court judgment it won from them. Now, a court dispute over those assets has revealed new information about a long-running criminal investigation federal prosecutors have been pursuing against LaForte, McElhone and others for years.
