Pruenca

WARWICK — The man who bilked hundreds of thousands of dollars from friends, strangers and “future” family members by purporting to variously be a Red Sox scout, real estate investor and a cancer patient, was sentenced Thursday after reaching a plea agreement with prosecutors. Charles H. Pruenca Jr., 39, admitted that all the personas were bogus and that he developed them to defraud those around him to maintain a lavish lifestyle.

Associate Justice Edward C. Clifton sentenced Pruenca to 20 years at the Adult Correctional Institutions, 5 years to serve, with the remainder suspended, and ordered him to pay restitution of $682,679 to seven victims. Pruenca pleaded guilty to six counts of obtaining money under false pretenses and one count of attempting to obtain money under false pretenses.

Pruenca was arraigned in May on a 16-count indictment: 8 counts of obtaining money under false pretenses, 7 counts of unlawful appropriation of an amount greater than $1,000, and one count of attempting to obtain money under false pretenses. The state dropped nine charges in the plea bargain.

“With this plea, you are admitting that you did, in fact, commit these offenses,” Clifton said to Pruenca prior to sentencing in Kent County Superior Court. “You understand that?”

“Yes, I do,” said Pruenca, who wore a black Lacoste polo shirt with white piping and handcuffs.

Pruenca, of Warwick, told the police that the scams started as a way to support a lavish lifestyle for his then-fiancé, Lynn Lander. Though neither were working, the couple rented a house for $1,750 a month in Jamestown. He rode around town in a new Dodge Charger or a Hummer H2, and bought a BMW convertible for Lander. The couple attended major league sporting events and took vacations.

In 2005, Pruenca began falsely telling people they could buy into a Warwick condominium project called Forest Pond. He took $5,000 from one man, $7,000 from another woman and $56,000 from his girlfriend’s parents, Will and Carol Lander. Another man, John W. Collins Jr., wrote Pruenca checks totaling $435,268 between 2005 and 2007 to buy into the project, as well as other tax-sale properties in Jamestown and Warwick. The investments never materialized.

Then, Pruenca told people he worked as a scout for the Red Sox, promising tickets and other perks in exchange for cash. Robert Vincent gave Pruenca $146,000 for playoff tickets and 2009 season tickets with seats in a premium seating club and other perks. Those tickets never materialized.

By 2007, the scam started to unravel. With people demanding their products or refunds, Pruenca told them he had cancer, to buy himself more time, authorities said. He had Lander take him to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston weekly for several months, supposedly for treatments. People donated money to help with medical bills, money which Pruenca then used to pay off older scams or buy things, authorities said.

In November 2008, a woman who had given Pruenca $6,366 for Red Sox tickets called the police to report the fraud. News of that arrest in The Journal led more of Pruenca’s victims to call the state police with their own stories of fraud.

Lander called the wedding off after she found out about the frauds and demanded that he repay Collins, her former boss at American Power Conversion. That’s when Pruenca attempted to deposit a $315,000 check from a closed Bank of Rhode Island account at Greenwood Credit Union in Warwick. A branch manager recognized Pruenca from media reports, confirmed the account was closed and called the state police. Pruenca never received any money from the bank.

A third case, where Pruenca allegedly offered to secure Dallas Cowboys season tickets for a man in exchange for $7,500 in cash two weeks after being released from prison, is still pending. Pruenca was arrested in September on that charge of obtaining money under false pretenses.

tbuford@projo.com