Listen to this articleAn East End entrepreneur who stole more than $385,000 from clients over a three-year period was sentenced to prison, officials said Tuesday.
Mark Ripolone, formerly of Montauk, had pleaded guilty last year to grand larceny charges. This week he was sentenced to three to nine years in prison, Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said.
“Theft will not be tolerated in Suffolk County,” Tierney said in a news release about the sentencing. “Instead of devoting his efforts to the honest repayment of his victims, this defendant just chose to steal more. He can now reflect on that choice in prison.”
Court documents and Ripolone’s admission show that between September 2018 and October 2021, the defendant stole about $225,000 from several customers of “123 Delivery,” a Montauk-based food delivery and concierge service. Officials say he had stolen the money after obtaining the bank account information and routing numbers of their accounts under the guise of conducting legitimate business affairs. Ripolone then used his customers’ specific account information to make Automated Clearing House withdrawals from their accounts that paid for his personal expenses, including credit card debts, a home mortgage payment and Verizon phone bills, officials said.
In addition, between April and May 2020, Ripolone stole $160,000 from a payroll company that was contracted to do payroll, officials said. He stole this money by having payroll money transferred to his personal bank account when he lacked the funds available to reimburse the payroll company, according to officials.
Since his guilty plea in October of 2023, Ripolone paid an initial $30,000 in restitution but then stopped making payments, officials said.
Separately, he was arrested twice in Westchester in October for allegedly stealing wallets out of the lockers of patrons at a local gym. In November, he pleaded guilty to two counts of petit larceny in Westchester County and was sentenced to six months in jail.
In addition to receiving the three to nine years prison sentence this week, Ripolone was ordered to pay $113,379 in restitution to East End Rotisserie, Paychex and American Express.
