Man charged in scheme to resell luxury foods pleads guilty

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A Providence man pled pled guilty in federal court Friday to assaulting a federal officer and committing wire fraud in a scheme to resell expensive seafood and meat.

Rhode Island U.S. Attorney Zachary Cunha said Paul Diogenes admitted to the court that he created a fictitious catering company, listing his alias Paul Dejullio as president, to obtain credit from food distributors. The credit was used to purchase about $830,000 in luxury foods, including lobster, sea bass, shrimp, scallops, filet, rib eye steak and wild boar, most of which was resold, Cunha said.

Diogenes also admitted to the court that as FBI agents and task force officers tried to arrest him in August in East Providence, he fled and rammed his car into an FBI vehicle with two people inside, drove toward an FBI agent who jumped out of the way to avoid being hit, rammed his car into a delivery van and then hit a second FBI task force vehicle that officers had just gotten out of, Cunha added.

Nine days later, the U.S. marshals and the FBI found him at a hotel in Middleborough, Massachusetts with a briefcase containing $116,000 in cash.

Diogenes is scheduled to be sentenced in March.