Cheating auctioneer jailed
Published July 8th, 2006
A city auctioneer who pocketed proceeds from estate sales was ordered Friday to pay back thousands of dollars to cheated customers and was sent to Northampton County Prison.
Judge Emil Giordano sentenced Edward Verba, 50, to 10 to 46 months in prison, seven years of probation and more than $75,000 restitution.
A hearing is scheduled 8:30 a.m. July 28 to review the amount owed each of Verba’s four victims.
Verba of Edward Verba Auction Marketing Services, 204 Northampton St., pleaded guilty May 8 to three counts of theft by failure to make required disposition of funds and a single count of writing bad checks.
Victims include a Nazareth man who lost $47,779 in an estate sale, a Slate Belt title insurance agency that lost $20,850 in a real estate transaction, a woman who lost $3,502 in a Lebanon, N.J., estate sale and another woman who lost $4,599 in an Upper Nazareth Township estate sale, according to court records.
