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Manny Moreno

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Manny Moreno

Real Name: Manuel J. Moreno Sr.
Aliases: Manny
Wanted For: Fraud
Missing Since: April 1991

Case[]

Details: In June 1990, Fran Fry Jr., a newspaper reporter from Franklin, Pennsylvania, stopped for a visit with several acquaintances. When one of the men began passing along investment tips, Fran’s reporter’s instincts were aroused. The friend told Fran about a sixty-two-year-old Sharon, Pennsylvania man named Manny Moreno and his real estate investment company. Moreno would buy real estate and develop it, putting in water towers and sewer lines. He then would sell it to developers. The friend invested money with Moreno; he told Fran that he always gets money from Moreno for his investment. He said that Moreno would actually come to his house once a month and pay him in cash.
Fran says that the more his friend talked, the more he suspected that the whole thing was a scam. He believed that Moreno was operating a Ponzi Scheme, where one gets new investors to invest money into their scam; they then use that money to pay their old investors. When Fran voiced his suspicions, his friend continued to insist that it was a "great deal." He even offered to set up a meeting with Moreno. Fran told him that he would like to meet Moreno.
Fran was very interested in Moreno's investment plan. Fran had his friend set up a meeting, which occurred a few weeks later. When Moreno pulled up to the friend’s house, Fran, as a matter of journalistic habit, took note of his license plate and its religious message: "You’ve got a friend in Jesus." Fran felt that Moreno was the type of individual who tried to "wear religion on his shoulders." He was wearing a large wristwatch that had the face of Jesus on it. Fran thought that Moreno was trying to portray himself as a born-again Christian; he believed it was a ruse to make his investors trust him.
Moreno told Fran about his real estate investment company, "M.J. and H.J. Moreno's Efficiency Apartment and Import-Export Co." He said that because he was a veteran, he heard about government land sales long before the general public did. As a result, he bought parcels of land, 200 acres or larger, for a low price. Then, he put in the water towers and sewer lines; he had his sons do all of the work. He enthusiastically explained how he set up housing developments on the land on a shoestring budget. He also told Fran that if he invested in his company, he would earn a 15% annual return on his investment; he told the same thing to his other investors. But he made one big mistake with Fran.
Fran asked Moreno exactly where the property was located. He said that it was hard to get to; it was out in Conneautville, Pennsylvania. Fran asked if he could see it sometime. Moreno said yes, and that he could take him out there. Fran and his wife owned a farm about five miles from Conneautville; he knew that no such development existed. During the meeting, Moreno said that he was running late and had to take off. Fran stayed behind with his friend and the friend’s wife, who were investors. They asked Fran how he felt about it, and he said that he thought Moreno was "a liar and a crook."
Fran not only smelled a rat; he also smelled a good story. He went to three different courthouses and did a search of the register and recorder of deeds. He could find no tracks of land registered to Moreno or his company. Fran’s next move was to visit Moreno’s only known business address. The place was decidedly un-businesslike. Fran describes it as "a rather ram shackled three story-type wooden frame building."
Fran could not find any evidence that anyone was living there. There was a lot of junk mail in the mailbox, indicating that no one had been around there for some time. Inside, he could see a telephone and an answering machine. He remembered that anytime he called Moreno, he never answered the phone; it was always the answering machine. While there, Fran ran into a neighbor. He asked him if anybody lived in the building. The neighbor did not think anyone did.
Later, Fran interviewed Moreno’s investors. They all had trouble believing that Moreno was anything other than charming and trustworthy. Investor George Clelland says that for three years, Moreno came with his money on the fifth day of every month. He had no reason to doubt him. However, Fran believed that this money, along with all the other interest payments, came from other investors. Before going to press, he called Moreno for a response to his article. He told Moreno that he could not find any county records for the real estate he described. Moreno said, "The property is out there, you didn’t look hard enough. It’s under another name." He then asked Fran to stop calling him, claiming that his wife was very sick. He said, "You’d be sorry if you keep calling me." He claimed that no one had ever been "hurt" investing with him. He then hung up.
Fran went ahead and published his article. When one of the investors moved to Florida and began receiving checks from Moreno through the mail, the U.S. Postal Service grew extremely interested. U.S. Postal Inspector Alan Coley says that the investment opportunity appeared too good to be true. He noted that there was too much interest being paid for the investment, and it was supposedly tax exempt. The investors were not rich people; they were average, everyday citizens. He knew that they could not afford to lose their money.
In March 1991, around the same time the postal inspectors began to call on Moreno’s investors, their interest payments stopped. It was discovered that certificates he had issued to them were fraudulent. Two of his investors, Clara Knauff and Florence Miller, went to check out the alleged housing development themselves. It was nowhere to be found. Neither was Moreno. He has not been seen since April 1991. A federal grand jury indicted him on five counts of mail fraud and two counts of wire fraud in February 1992. He is believed to have bilked thirty-four investors out of over $1.2 million. Sadly, most of his victims were the most vulnerable of targets: the elderly. Most lived in Butler and Mercer counties in Pennsylvania.
When Florence learned of the scam, she says she thought about all of the other victims and how Moreno had not only stolen their money, but also the "good years of their lives." Clara says she would like to get him off the streets to keep him from doing this to anybody else. She feels sorry for everyone that has been "caught up in it." Another investor, Hannah Weller, says that she would like to see Moreno face justice. She notes that many widows in her investment club cannot afford to lose the money taken from them.
Extra Notes:

  • This case first aired on the January 6, 1995 episode; it was updated on the November 3, 1995 episode.
  • It was excluded from the FilmRise release of the Robert Stack episodes.
  • It is not to be confused with another fraud case, Danny Marino.
Manny Moreno

Moreno after his 1995 arrest

Results: Captured. After the broadcast, viewers in Ontario, Canada, reported to local police that they knew a man named "Mario Martinez" who looked just like Moreno. On February 22, 1995, he was arrested without incident in Guelph, Ontario. He told authorities that he and his wife had been moving to a different Canadian town every six months and taking care of elderly people. Three months after his arrest, he was extradited from Toronto to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was arraigned on five counts of mail fraud. On July 25, 1995, he pled guilty to one of the charges and accepted responsibility for the others.
In October 1995, Moreno was sentenced to twenty-seven months in federal prison and ordered to repay the $1.2 million he had stolen. At his sentencing hearing, he told the judge that he was going to write a book about how he eluded authorities. He claimed that he and his wife would use the book's proceeds to repay his victims. It is not known if this was ever done. Authorities were unable to account for about $700,000 of the $1.2 million taken by Moreno. However, they learned he had spent about $5,000 a week on lottery tickets. On February 7, 1997, he was released from prison.
Sadly, on May 15, 2016, Fran passed away at the age of seventy-six.
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