Is this the reason Joe Giudice‘s deportation appeal has been pending for the past several months?
According to a new report, a multimillion-dollar bank settlement from 2010 is said to be at the center of the Real Housewives of New Jersey dad’s case.
On April 1, North Jersey explained that in Joe’s appeal, his immigration attorney, Jerard Gonzalez, said that Joe, the husband of Teresa Giudice, was one of about 900 New Jersey residents who the settlement with Wells Fargo affected. As he explained, two of Joe’s home-related loans were forgiven due to the ruling.
Jerard said that because the loans were forgiven, Joe shouldn’t have been denied the cancellation of his deportation based on the “alleged loss to a bank for loans” and his offenses should have never been qualified as an aggravated felony.
As fans may know, it is Joe’s aggravated felony that makes the father of four eligible for deportation.
“The loans in question were written off,’’ Jerard said. “The loans that were on the properties that he was convicted of committing fraud on, there was no loss. … they had no choice on that; the banks wrote them off.”
After making a plea deal after being charged with bank and wire fraud, Joe was sentenced to a 41-month prison term and was forced to pay $400,000 in restitution to the bank.
“I don’t even think the bank was even entitled to it, but it was mandatory,” Jerard said. “To me, maybe that money should have been given to the attorney general, not to the bank.”
Since his prison release last month, Joe has been spending his days at an immigration detention center at the Clinton County Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania.
According to the report, the 2010 settlement between the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office and Wells Fargo required the bank to provide customers in New Jersey with $67 million in loan modifications, including the forgiveness of interest and late fees, principal reductions, principal forgiveness, and reductions in consumers’ interest rates.
As for Joe’s future, his attorney told the outlet he is unsure about when the courts will make their final decision about Joe’s deportation appeal.
“They are supposed to expedite detained cases, but it’s been a year since we started,” Jerard said.
The Real Housewives of New Jersey season 10 is in production and expected to air on Bravo TV later this year.
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