New Jersey deli fraudsters fail to pay millions in restitution

That’s one big deli bill to skip out of paying.

A federal judge is hotter than a newly brewed pot of coffee over the failure of Peter Coker Sr. and his son, Peter Coker Jr., to pay millions of dollars in restitution for their leading roles in the notorious $100 million New Jersey deli stock fraud.

The Coker convicts owe a total of $5.56 million to victims of their scam, which involved illegally inflating the stock prices of two publicly traded companies to make them attractive candidates for mergers.

The scheme led to one of the companies, then-known as Hometown International, having a market capitalization of more than $100 million despite owning only one small, money-losing delicatessen in the hardscrabble south Jersey town of Paulsboro.

Shares of the other company, then known as E-Waste, were worth even more on paper at one point despite owning no appreciable assets.

Judge Christine O’Hearn, in a scathing order about the Cokers on Monday, said, “It appears … that, despite having substantial liquid assets at the time the sentence was imposed, neither Defendant has complied with the restitution deadlines set by the Court.”

“It appears to the Court that Defendants have purposefully failed to make payment, perhaps in an effort to avoid doing so and/or dissipating or transferring assets,” O’Hearn wrote in U.S. District Court in New Jersey.

Peter Coker Sr., who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, owed his first installment of $2.5 million in restitution within 30 days of Aug. 11, according to an order by O’Hearn in August.

Coker Jr., a businessman who previously lived in Hong Kong, owed his first installment of $1.5 million within 30 days of the same date.

The Cokers and a third defendant who pleaded guilty in the case, James Patten, are jointly liable for the $5.56 million in total restitution. Patten has yet to be sentenced; because of that, he is not currently required to start paying restitution.

Retail investors are owed $178,849 in total restitution. And investment arms of Duke and Vanderbilt universities are owed $3.1 million and $2.3 million, respectively, in restitution.

In her Monday order, O’Hearn demanded answers from prosecutors and the Cokers’ lawyers within two weeks on questions related to the failure to pay restitution so far.

The judge told them “to take all necessary steps forthwith to secure payment of the restitution amounts previously ordered.”

One potential hurdle to getting money from Peter Coker Jr. is the fact that the 57-year-old is no longer in prison — or even the United States.

Coker Jr. renounced his U.S. citizenship years ago.

On Oct. 16, a day after his release from prison, he we was deported to the Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, where he has citizenship, according to a letter to O’Hearn from his lawyer.