Reputed Detroit mafia associate Gino Accettola has pled no contest to theft charges in state court related to a credit card scam where he’s alleged to have stolen almost $150,000 from a local credit-card processing company he employed for his tanning salon chain, Miami Tan. He faces up to 20 years in prison but his plea, which is considered an admission of guilt in the legal system, will most likely shield him from a heavy sentence. Accettola, 51, operates five Miami Tan outlets across the Metro Detroit area. The case stems from a request for $200,000 dollars in additional funds from the credit-card processing firm (Interlink Repayment Systems) that he said was to sell a new tanning product. The product had in fact been recalled by its’ manufacturers. According to his indictment, Accettola only repaid $52,000 and used the remaining money to go on spending sprees and vacations with his girlfriend. In an unrelated civil case from 2016, Accettola, a convicted felon, was found responsible for swindling 11 investors out of $4,000,000 in a construction-company linked Ponzi scheme. He’s been ordered to repay $12,000,000 to his victims, monies that have not yet been handed over according to the victims’ attorney. A chunk of the money pilfered, roughly $1,700,000, was gambled away at the MGM Grand Casino in downtown Detroit. Throughout his Ponzi scheme, Accettola bragged of his mob ties, going as far as to blame the reason he was withholding profits from investors on orders from his bosses in the mafia. The 11 investors gave him money for bogus general contracting jobs. Back in 2013, he pled guilty in state court to another fraud offense and received a suspended 10-month jail sentence. He did prison time in the 1990s. Per sources, Accettola is connected to the Tocco wing of Detroit’s Tocco-Zerilli crime family. Gino Accettola
