By Barbara Boyer
The Philadelphia Inquirer
DEPTFORD TOWNSHIP, Pa. — A former Deptford Township volunteer firefighter was sentenced Monday to four years and four months in prison for stealing $589,000 from his fire company, including funds to rebuild the firehouse after a devastating 2008 blaze.
Charles V. Mancini III, 46, of Wenonah, turned to face about a dozen of his old colleagues from the New Sharon Volunteer Fire Department who sat stoically in the gallery during his sentencing at U.S. District Court in Camden.
“I acted out of greed,” Mancini said. He said he felt remorse and guilt about his old life, which he claimed had been controlled by a demon.
Inspired by God, Mancini said, he planned to become a better individual and recalled how he once had stood proudly with the brotherhood he loved. Mancini was the company’s president and treasurer before coming under investigation by the FBI.
“I loved that firehouse just as much as you did,” Mancini said.
After the fire, Mancini pillaged $449,000 paid by the department’s insurance company. He previously stole $90,000 from an unauthorized loan to the company. He made bad personal investments with the money, Mancini said.
When it was their turn, members of the now-homeless fire company expressed no forgiveness, only anger and feelings of betrayal by a man they said they had trusted.
The department’s secretary, Frank Ellis, 70, told Mancini he had considered him a friend he could depend on. Instead, he said, Mancini was a liar and a thief.
“What really hurts me is that you took my trust,” Ellis said, turning toward Mancini and his Haddon Heights attorney, Rocco Cipparone Jr. “Mr. Mancini, I hope God forgives you for your crime, because I cannot.”
One firefighter suggested that Mancini may have set the fire that destroyed the brick building on Delsea Drive that would have turned 100 years old next year.
Mancini has denied he had anything to do with the blaze, which authorities say started in an electrical closet. The fire’s cause is unknown and remains listed as suspicious.
The fire destroyed most of the company’s apparatus. Among the losses was a prizewinning vintage Ford pickup fitted with a 200-gallon water tank.
“I would not put it past him to set the fire,” Demetrius “Tike” Sypsomos, 58, the company’s vice president, told U.S. District Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez. Sypsomos grew up in New Sharon and lives across the street from the former firehouse. “Every time I look out my bedroom window, I think of this,” he said.
Mancini, who officials say earned a good living, pleaded guilty in September to fraud and embezzlement. During that hearing, he admitted he had created false bank statements to cover up his crimes. By the time authorities discovered the thefts, the money was gone. A fellow firefighter said Mancini had worked in sales.
Losses resulting from Mancini’s crimes were not just financial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Stigall told the judge. With the firehouse gone, the community is not as safe. The volunteers now use firehouses in other parts of Deptford.
The company answers about 300 calls a year, mostly for stove and brush fires, medical calls, and car accidents. It is not publicly funded, and the remaining volunteers are trying to raise money to rebuild.
The company’s new treasurer, Kim Conner, her voice shaking, put it this way: “This was not victimless. It was heartless.”
Four of Mancini’s relatives, including his wife, sat in the courtroom but did not speak. The judge noted that he had received letters asking for leniency partly because of the hardship incarceration would impose on Mancini’s wife and children.
The judge was not swayed, however, and said Mancini never considered what would happen to them as he kissed them goodbye each day and left to carry out his crimes.
The judge noted that Mancini had made some restitution, and ordered him to repay another $505,000. He also ordered supervised release for three years after prison.
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