A Bell Acres man convicted of the largest tax fraud ever in Western Pennsylvania is scheduled to report to federal prison on Monday.
In September, a judge ordered Joseph Nocito, 81, to serve one year and one day in federal prison. But last month Nocito asked that his sentence be reduced or that he be allowed to serve it on house arrest with electronic monitoring.
Senior U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti on Saturday denied the request, noting that she had already given Nocito a break when she sentenced him.
Nocito is to report to the Federal Medical Center at Lexington.
Nocito pleaded guilty in November 2022 to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
According to federal prosecutors, he failed to pay $15 million in taxes from 2006 to 2012 and then used the money to build a 51,000-square feet mansion on 6.2 acres.
He was president and CEO of Automated Health Systems, a Medicaid enrollment brokering firm. Among the allegations against him, that he under-reported company profits.
Suggested guidelines called for a prison term of 37 to 46 months, but Conti reduced that penalty significantly, noting his age.
She ordered him to serve a year in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, with the first six months on home detention.
Nocito was also ordered to pay $15 million in restitution, which he did prior to sentencing.
Nocito asked to be allowed to start his sentence in January so he had time for a knee replacement first. But when he decided to postpone surgery until after his sentence he sought another delay until after April 17 so that he could review his companies’ voluminous tax returns.
But Conti wrote that Nocito has had sufficient time to arrange his financial affairs.
“Going to prison is unavoidably disruptive, which serves part of its role in providing just punishment and deterrence to criminal activity by Nocito and others,” she wrote.
Paula Reed Ward is a TribLive reporter covering federal and Allegheny County courts. She joined the Trib in 2019 after spending nearly 17 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team. She is the author of “Death by Cyanide.” She can be reached at pward@triblive.com.