That’s what his lawyers told the judge who will be sentencing the young Italian con man, who pleaded guilty last month to a bundle of fraud charges. Follieri’s lawyer, Flora Edwards, argued for a three-year prison term, on the low end of the spectrum — he could serve for more than five years. A sample of Edwards’s reasoning:
“He was surrounded by movie stars and celebrities and this young man who neither drinks nor smokes was intoxicated with it all … Unfortunately, he lacked the resources to maintain the opulent lifestyle of his new friends. Even more unfortunately, he had almost unfettered access to hundreds of thousands of dollars with few controls on his spending ability, until it was too late.”
Mmm. We’re not sure Follieri thought it was so “unfortunate” when he was flying around with the Clintons, dating movie star Anne Hathaway, and living in a $40,000-a-month Trump Tower apartment. Still, the lawyer is probably right. Follieri would never last five years in jail. Can you just imagine the call he’ll make to his old pal John McCain for prison advice? “Oh, Raffaello, I was in a Vietnamese prison camp for five years, with multiple broken bones and daily torture, and I survived,” McCain would probably observe. “You, on the other hand, better just go in ass-forward and hope some musclehound takes you as his bitch.”
Lawyer for Anne Hathaway’s ex, Raffaello Follieri, begs for mercy [NYDN]
That’s what his lawyers told the judge who will be sentencing the young Italian con man, who pleaded guilty last month to a bundle of fraud charges. Follieri’s lawyer, Flora Edwards, argued for a three-year prison term, on the low end of the spectrum — he could serve for more than five years. A sample of Edwards’s reasoning:
