Peter Coker Jr., left, is issued search warrants from police at his villa on the southern resort island of Phuket, Thailand, Jan. 11, 2023.
Crime Suppression Division, Royal Thai Police | AP
NEWARK, N.J. – The previous fugitive connected to a Recent Jersey deli company whose stock once was absurdly valued at $100 million was ordered held in jail without bail — for now, not less than — on Wednesday after his extradition from Thailand.
But Hong Kong businessman Peter Coker Jr. is willing to place up all the cash he has — as much as about $4 million or more — along with his parents offering their “dream” home as collateral to secure his release on bond, a defense attorney told a judge in U.S. District Court in Newark, Recent Jersey.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Shawn Barnes was mum in court on whether he’ll oppose bond for Coker Jr., but is anticipated to achieve this in the approaching days.
Watching from the gallery was Coker’s mother, Susan, and his father, Peter Coker Sr., 80, who can also be a defendant within the case.
“He looks good,” Susan Coker told her son’s lawyers, John Azzaerello and Bill McGovern, afterward.
The male Cokers and a 3rd man, 63-year-old James Patten, are accused of a scheme to artificially boost the costs of the publicly traded stocks of Hometown International, and a related shell company, E-Waste, to extend their attractiveness as merger partners for personal corporations.
The stock price of Hometown, which owned only the small, money-losing Your Hometown Deli in Paulsboro, rose greater than 900% consequently of the alleged scheme. E-Waste’s shares popped almost 20,000%.
Each corporations were forced to take the highly unusual, if not unprecedented, step of publicly disavowing their massive market valuations after CNBC detailed legal issues surrounding multiple people connected to the businesses, including Coker Sr.
A bitter homecoming
Peter Coker Sr. and wife at U.S. District Court in Newark, Recent Jersey, March 15, 2023.
Dan Mangan | CNBC
The elder Cokers drove from their home in Chapel, Hill, North Carolina, for what turned out to be only a 10-minute-long hearing on Wednesday to see, but not confer with their 54-year-old son, who was in shackles for the proceeding.
“We love our son,” Susan Coker told CNBC after the hearing. “We miss our son.”
Coker Sr., nonetheless, snapped, “You have to be hard up,” after being asked how he felt about having his son back home.
Coker Jr., who was wearing a black, Nehru-collar shirt with red buttons, was nearly 40 kilos lighter than he had been before spending two months locked up in a Bangkok jail under what his defense attorney Azzarello told Magistrate Judge Michael Hammer were “pretty deplorable” conditions.
“I believe he was pretty glad to see the USA as a few of my ancestors were to see the Statue of Liberty,” quipped Azzarello, who entered a not-guilty plea on behalf of his client.
Hammer, after advising Coker Jr. of his rights, said he would keep him locked up pending a advice soon from federal authorities on whether he should remain detained or free on bail with certain conditions.
Azarello told Hammer that Coker Jr. had about $2 million in a Wells Fargo account in the USA, and roughly the identical amount in an account in Hong Kong. Nonetheless, the Hong Kong account has been frozen by authorities there, he said.
The lawyer also said the elder Cokers’ home, which they’re willing to make use of as security in order that their son will be released to live with them or his sister in the identical state, is value $830,000.
Coker Jr. is “just about willing to stake every nickel he has” to be released on bond, Azzarello said.
After the hearing, Azzarello told CNBC, “I do not think this case, by any means, requires pretrial detention.”
But Azzarello said expects the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Recent Jersey to ask a judge to maintain the younger Coker locked up until he, Coker Sr. and Patten, are tried for the intense criminal charges.
Coker Sr. and Patten, who were arrested in September after a grand jury indicted them and Coker Jr. on 12 criminal counts, each remain free on $100,000 bond.
Matthew Reilly, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, declined to comment when asked whether prosecutors from the office would oppose Coker Jr.’s bail request.
From deli to detention
Hometown Deli, Paulsboro, N.J.
Mike Calia | CNBC
Coker Jr., who had lived for a long time in Hong Kong, previously served because the chairman of Hometown International. His father was a significant shareholder in the corporate, whose stock market capitalization once topped $100 million despite the deli it owned having revenue of lower than $40,000 over a two-year period.
The younger Coker also had served as executive chairman of South Shore Holdings Ltd., a Hong Kong company that owned a financially troubled hotel in Macau, China: The 13.
That property’s initial investors included Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors, Fidelity International and Omega Advisors.
Three months after his father and Patten were arrested, Coker Jr. was apprehended by Thai police on Jan. 11 within the resort area of Phuket, where he had been staying in a hotel.
Thai police said he had entered the country with a passport issued by the Caribbean island of St. Kitts and Nevis, which sells citizenships in exchange for investments there.
A prosecutor in Thailand’s Attorney General’s Office told the Associated Press after the arrest that Coker Jr. had waived extradition back to the U.S.
The prosecutor said also told the AP that Coker Jr. “was visibly frail when he was taken in and told us that he needs medical treatment for his liver disease.”
“We imagine that he entered Thailand with a possible plan to settle here,” the prosecutor said.
