Reputed Detroit Mob Associate Accettola Nailed In Credit-Card Scam, Has To Give Fraud Victims $12 Mil In Separate Case

The legal troubles continue to mount for alleged Detroit mafia associate and accomplished con man Gino Accettola. Two months after agreeing to pay a cool $12,000,000 in restitution fees to victims in a Ponzi scheme surrounding bogus construction projects from a civil law suit filed in Macomb County, Michigan last year, the 49-year old Accettola now finds himself criminally charged with defrauding a local Metro Detroit credit card processing company of $150,000.

The new case is related to a raise in his credit limit given to him in order to provide refunds to customers at his chain of tanning salons that never occurred and instead went towards goodies for him and his fiancé – of the roughly $200,000 in transactions fronted by Interlink Repayment Systems of Clinton Township’s, Michigan, Accettola has only repaid $52,000 as of last week’s preliminary hearing in district court where Interlink employee Robert Pannell testified about the accused fraud and being conned into okaying the increase in funding for what Accettola described as a faulty tanning product his five Miami Tan outlets carried.

Accettola has pled not guilty and is free on bond awaiting trial. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. The next preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for April 13.

It’s been a rough year so far for Accettola, already a multiple-time convicted felon. In January, he admitted to cheating close to a dozen investors out of nearly four million dollars in fraudulent construction jobs. Sources in law enforcement confirm he is being investigated criminally in the construction-project fraud as well.

According to the November 2016 civil suit, Accettola purported to be a general contractor with big-money construction projects about to launch in Michigan and Florida who was looking for financing but in reality was just trying to fleece people out of their cash – Accettola accepted loans totaling $4.7 million bucks from 11 individuals or businesses in Metro Detroit over a two-year period (2014-2016), with investors coughing up anywhere between $15,000 and $1,500,000 apiece for stakes that were in essence worth practically nothing – between Accettola and his co-defendants, less than a million was repaid.

The law suit alleged Accettola bragged of his mob connections and took some of the stolen dough and bought his girlfriend an engagement ring, among other lavish purchases. When one of the plaintiffs approached Accettola in February 2016 to complain about not getting paid back what he was owed, Accettola blamed the hold up on his superiors in the Detroit mafia.

Per sources on both sides of the law, Accettola is linked to the Tocco faction of the mob in the Motor City. He did a prison stint in the 1990s. Accettola’s most recent run-in with the law prior to his current credit-card fraud case came three years ago when he pled guilty in Macomb County Circuit Court to a fraud-related offense in 2013 and received probation and a suspended 10-month jail term.