A former mayor of Utica in upstate New York admitted Friday to spending nearly all of the scholarship donations raised in memory of his late wife on himself, federal prosecutors said.
Louis LaPolla, 78, pled guilty in a federal court in Syracuse to “mail fraud for soliciting and then stealing donations intended for a scholarship fund in his late wife’s name,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of New York said in a statement Friday.
LaPolla admitted to spending on himself nearly all of the almost $40,000 donated to memorialize Andrea LaPolla, who died in 2018, according to the statement. The scholarship fund was reportedly meant to go toward supporting Utica City School District (UCSD) students who wanted to pursue college-level education in health-related fields.
LaPolla was the mayor of Utica from 1984 to 1995 and USCD board president from 2018 to 2022 after having been a board member for 21 years, the statement noted. (RELATED: Feds Investigate Democratic Mayor Accused Of Corruption: REPORT)
LaPolla, a Republican, was Utica’s longest-serving mayor and the first to be elected to a four-year mayoral term in Utica, the Utica Observer-Dispatch reported. LaPolla did not know how to face another UCSD election alone following his wife’s death at the start of his first term as board president, he told the outlet.
LaPolla, however, not only pled guilty to the federal mail fraud charges but also separately pled guilty earlier this year to a misdemeanor charge of petit larceny, for which he was sentenced to two months under house arrest and a three-year probation, according to a statement by the prosecuting office. He was also ordered to pay $3,100 in restitution, the statement said. The charge stemmed from his use of UCSD supplies to send out fundraising flyers publicizing the scholarship, according to the prosecutors. LaPolla pled guilty to the petit larceny charge in February, according to the outlet.
LaPolla claimed he had incurred sizable medical debt due to his wife’s death and did not realize he could not borrow from the scholarship fund to offset some of the debt, the outlet reported. He also claimed six students had benefited from the fund, according to the outlet.
LaPolla, due to be sentenced in September, could spend up to 20 years in prison with a three-year supervised release, pay a fine of up to $1.5 million and pay $38,616 in restitution, according to the prosecuting office’s statement.
