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
A former fugitive charged with stock manipulation within the bizarre case of a money-losing Latest Jersey deli once valued at $100 million was flying in custody from Thailand late Tuesday, en path to a planned court appearance in the US, his lawyer said.
The defendant, fallen Hong Kong businessman Peter Coker Jr., is predicted to seem in U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J., as early as Wednesday afternoon, or as late as Thursday, the attorney John Azzarello told CNBC.
Coker Jr., 54, was arrested within the resort area of Phuket, Thailand, in mid-January. He was apprehended greater than three months after the well-publicized arrests in North Carolina of his two co-defendants: his father Peter Coker Sr., and James Patten.
Since his arrest by Thai authorities, Coker Jr. had been held in a Bangkok jail and was awaiting transport to the U.S., having waived extradition.
Azzarello said that Coker Jr.’s legal team “continues to be in discussions with” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Latest Jersey on a possible bail package. He wouldn’t comment on whether prosecutors were against a judge releasing Coker Jr. on bond.
A spokesman for the prosecutors’ office didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
The 80-year-old Coker Sr. and the 64-year-old Patten were freed on $100,000 bond each after their arrests in September for the alleged scheme, which spanned eight years.
All three defendants are charged in a 12-count indictment in Camden, N.J., federal court, that alleges they committed financial crimes related to 2 publicly traded corporations.
One in every of those corporations, Hometown International, owned only a modest, now-shuttered deli in Paulsboro, Latest Jersey. The opposite firm, E-Waste, was a shell company that had no assets.
Peter Lee Coker mugshot from the Raleigh/Wake City-County Bureau of Identification (CCBI).
Source: Raleigh/Wake City-County Bureau of Identification
Prosecutors accuse the trio of a scheme to artificially inflate the worth of stock shares of each corporations to sky-high levels in an effort to make them attractive takeover candidates for personal firms hoping to make the most of their stock market tickers.
“These tactics artificially inflated the worth of Hometown International and E-Waste’s stock by giving the misunderstanding that there was a real market interest within the stock,” prosecutors said in a news release last fall. “Their scheme had the final word impact of artificially inflating Hometown International’s stock by roughly 939 percent and E-Waste’s stock by roughly 19,900 percent.”
