Allentown Man Accused of Forging to Steal Chocolate

An Allentown man was arrested on charges that he used forged checks from a closed bank account to defraud a Bethlehem business of nearly $1,500 in chocolate, according to court records.

Joseph Fiore, 50, of 421 W. Washington St., Allentown, is facing four felony counts of forgery, two counts of writing bad checks, two counts of theft and two counts of receiving stolen property.

He was arraigned Monday before and bail was set at $25,000. Fiore was already being held at Lehigh County Prison on other unrelated charges.

According to the arrest affidavit:

• Fiore visited Keystone State Distributors, 845 Stefko Boulevard, on March 15 to pick up two boxes of Hershey’s chocolate products valued at $730. He paid for them using a check from Universal Underwriters and signed his name “Anthony Larusso,” and claimed that he was Larusso.
• Four days later, on March 19, Fiore returned to Keystone State Distributors buy two more boxes of Hershey’s chocolate products for $730. Again he used a check from Universal Underwriters and signed it using the name “Anthony Larusso.”
• On March 20, Keystone State Distributors learned that the checks they had received were from a closed account and they called Bethlehem police, providing the department with surveillance video of the man who came into the store and brought in the bad checks.
• A detective from the Lehigh County Automobile Theft Task Force identified the man in the photos as Fiore. He was familiar with him from other cases.
• A criminal background check of Fiore revealed that he has been arrested a number of times previously for theft, writing bad checks, deceptive business practices, falsely impersonating other persons and forgery.

Court records said Fiore has used the aliases John Powell, Anthony Powell and Defaccenatti in previous encounters.