By MARYCLAIRE DALE | February 17, 2015
She bought draperies flecked with Swarovski crystals.
The ceiling mural at her “Gone with the Wind”- inspired
mansion featured her family in robes, gazing down from the heavens.
And Claire Risoldi’s grand Republican fundraising soirees
included the time she surprised guests by getting married at “Clairemont,” the
10-acre Pennsylvania estate now at the center of an alleged $20 million
insurance fraud scheme.
“I had a great life with Claire and I love her to no end. …
There is no one like her,” her second husband, Thomas French, wrote in a
suicide note this month, weeks after the couple and five others were charged.
“I committed no crime and I can’t bear seeing Claire … (and the others) going
through this mess.”
In a grand jury report, prosecutors with the Democratic-led
state attorney general’s office paint Risoldi as the matriarch of a family that
lived large on the proceeds of suspicious
fires – three in five years – and suddenly-missing jewelry.
Risoldi, 67, has called the prosecution politically driven.
At her husband’s funeral Thursday, she greeted guests in a church lobby
bedecked in a stylish fur jacket, spike-heeled boots, aviator sunglasses and
her trademark bouffant hairdo.
“She’s a very colorful character, but she’s a decent
person,” said Jack McMahon, one of several family lawyers working on the case.
“(The report) is like a 47-page novella, but it doesn’t spell out a crime.”
Risoldi, French and her two adult children, Carla and Carl,
were charged with racketeering, theft, insurance fraud and other crimes. Two
others, including the man who said he sold Risoldi $2 million worth of
draperies, are charged with fraud.
The tarp-capped white mansion – a seeming homage to Scarlett
O’Hara’s Tara that Risoldi shared with her children and grandchildren – now
sits empty amid rolling farmland in Bucks County, a few miles from New Hope’s
quaint downtown in suburban Philadelphia.
The family’s insurer to date has paid $11 million for damage
from the last fire in October 2013, just a few weeks after her surprise wedding
to French. But American International Group balked at belated claims that
someone – Risoldi blames firefighters – had also taken $10 million in jewelry.
The grand jury report notes she had a fourth fire claim at a
previous home where she also reported two bizarre break-in thefts. And, it
said, she was always the last person to leave the house, and had highly
flammable hairspray stockpiled near the point of origin.
“These records proved to be a treasure trove of information
revealing a long history of questionable claims that was startling to us in its
depth and breadth,” state prosecutors wrote in the grand jury report.
Defense lawyers argue that all three fires at Clairemont
were investigated by the insurance company and deemed accidental. Their experts
blamed the last two on faulty wiring. The fire marshal’s office has declared
the causes undetermined, according to prosecutors.
“All three of these fires were fully investigated and vetted
by AIG,” McMahon said. “Generally speaking, they don’t like to just give you
money.”
Risoldi grew up across the river in Trenton, New Jersey,
where she ran a ticket agency and promoted rock concerts as a young woman in
the 1970s. An August 1976 news article shows her standing outside a Cherry
Hill, New Jersey venue called the Centrum, and described her plans to bring in
acts ranging from Lawrence Welk to Sly & The Family Stone and Loretta Lynn.
Risoldi at one point won a large anti-trust settlement
against a large ticket broker, family lawyer Ronald Greenblatt said. She has
not worked for pay in recent years, except to help out at her daughter’s law
office.
Carla Risoldi, 48, a former county prosecutor, did not
immediately return a call for comment. Carl Risoldi, a 43-year-old state
turnpike worker, declined comment.
However, family defense lawyers question the logic of any
plan to profit from the mansion fires, since they say the money would only be
spent to rebuild it. And they question why Risoldi would make up jewelry claims
– for diamonds, rubies, emeralds – if it meant she couldn’t wear the pieces
again in public.
“This is a woman who was fiercely proud of all the jewelry
she has,” Greenblatt said. “There’s no way that she would ever not want to be
in a position to show it off.”
She and French – a 64-year-old architect, ex-Marine and
retired sheriff’s deputy – had been together for more than a decade. If she was
the extrovert extraordinaire, he was content to cook, garden and visit their
place in Paris.
“He appreciated the finer things in life. He cooked, they
made wine together,” said Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler, who
attended the congressional fundraiser-turned-wedding. “I always liked the guy.”
McMahon said he spoke frequently with French in recent
months, and believes the charges caused him to be “disillusioned and depressed”
about the perceived abuse of power by a government that meant so much to him.
French’s note called the charges by the attorney general’s office “unfounded.”
The office did not immediately return a message seeking
comment.
The trial has not yet been scheduled. Meanwhile, prosecutors
have seized millions in assets, and a vehicle fleet that includes several
Ferraris.
There was nonetheless a brilliant yellow Ferrari parked near
French’s hearse outside the Catholic funeral Mass.
“I am very sad to have done this,” French wrote in his note.
“Honestly my mental state can’t absorb any more.”
/__________________________________________/
JANUARY 27, 2015
A family’s luxurious suburban lifestyle has been financed by more than $20 million in fraudulent insurance claims amid a series of mansion fires and repeated reports of jewelry theft, authorities said Thursday.
An investigation began after a 2013 fire at the stately home Claire Risoldi shared with relatives in Doylestown, an hour’s drive north of Philadelphia. It was the third blaze in five years at the property, which she dubbed Clairemont, authorities said.
Risoldi had falsely accused volunteer firefighters of stealing 55 pieces of jewelry worth more than $10 million while battling the flames, according to a grand jury presentment. The family’s jewelry collection had included two items valued at $106,000 only four months earlier, officials said.
Authorities said the ensuing probe uncovered a decades-long pattern of questionable insurance claims by Risoldi. She still possessed jewelry she reported stolen in 1993, according to investigators. She had reported another jewelry theft from a different home in 1984 and a house fire in 1977.
As a result of the investigation, authorities seized about $7 million in family assets, including $3 million in bank accounts, $1.2 million in jewelry, six Ferraris and two Rolls-Royces.
The state attorney general’s office charged Risoldi, 67, with counts including conspiracy, attempted theft by deception, witness intimidation and forgery. Six other people, including her husband, two children and daughter-in-law, also face charges.
Risoldi, who is free after posting bail, isn’t living at the Doylestown home and couldn’t be located for comment Thursday. Her daughter’s lawyer had no comment.
Officials haven’t determined the causes of the Doylestown fires, but they said large amounts of highly flammable material had been placed near the origin of each blaze. Video from the home’s security system in 2013 showed Risoldi leaving a minute before smoke was visible outside the house, authorities said.
An insurance company has paid out more than $20 million for the three fires but is fighting the most recent jewelry claim. Physical evidence “proved that the jewelry could not have possibly been stolen in the manner described by the Risoldis,” the grand jury presentment said.