BY JOHN SHIFFMAN INQUIRER STAFF WRITER A Philadelphia egg-processing factory owner who made a name for himself offering high-dollar, high-profile rewards for unsolved crimes pleaded guilty yesterday to a gun
charge and agreed to plead guilty to expected tax charges.
Joseph Mammana, who has been in federal custody since November, used checks written from his factory to the Citizens Crime Commission and Sam Katz for Mayor to evade federal income taxes, authorities said. Mammana, 46, agreed to plead guilty to failing to pay taxes on roughly $400,000 in 2005 income and underreported income from 2000 to 2004. Those charges are expected to be filed soon.
When IRS agents raided his Yardley home Nov. 29, they found a loaded revolver — a crime because he is a previously convicted felon. His five previous felonies include bounced checks, car theft, and a 1990 assault on his then-wife. Yesterday’s plea by Mammana represented a further fall from grace for the self-styled crime fighter, who has drawn media attention to high-profile missing-persons cases – and, in the process, to himself.
He accumulated acclaim for funding rewards for information leading to convictions in several Philadelphia murders and kidnappings. But he also drew criticism for allegedly refusing to pay the rewards later. Kevin Miles, president of Central Ohio Crime Stoppers, said he was so angry at Mammana for breaking pledges in Ohio cases that he drove to Philadelphia yesterday to watch him plead guilty.
“I think he’s a horrible man,” Miles said. “One of the sickest things you can do is to give people hope and then rip it away.”
Mammana probably faces at least six years in prison under the federal advisory sentencing guidelines, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Bresnick said. Mammana must also pay the IRS at least $200,000 and forfeit a 2003 Lamborghini Murcielago valued at more than $250,000.
At Mammana’s office, the prosecutor said, investigators found a photograph of Mammana, with brass knuckles on one hand and a baseball bat in the other, posing in front of a sign that proclaimed: “It’s not about justice. It’s about revenge.”
INQUIRER: So Much For Hiding In Plain Sight
PREVIOUSLY: Oh, You Mean THAT Gun?
SCARED MONKEYS: “Beth Holloway Twitty [Mother of The Missing Blonde in Aruba] stayed with me and my family last week in Philadelphia. I watched this mother cry. My family and I cried with her. Her tears are tears of pain, sorrow, loss. My mother’s tears are of sympathy. Mine, however ARE NOT, mine are of pure anger. ” — Joe Mammama, 2005