Risoldi enters Bucks County jail to serve contempt sentence

Posted April 11, 2019

A politically prominent Buckingham socialite awaiting sentencing in a multimillion-dollar insurance fraud case turned herself into authorities this week to serve a 30-day sentence for contempt, nearly three years after a judge ordered she serve jail time for violating a court order.

Claire Risoldi at her 2019 fraud trial

Claire Risoldi, 71, entered Bucks County Correctional Center on Tuesday to start her sentence, Bucks County spokesman Larry King confirmed Thursday. Risoldi is being housed in general population in the women’s wing of the prison.

This is the second time that Risoldi has been incarcerated in Bucks County prison; the first occurred in 2016 when she was jailed for five days after she was arrested on witness intimidation charges, which eventually were dropped.

Risoldi surrendered to authorities two weeks after losing her final appeal to have the contempt finding thrown out. A U.S. District Court judge last month denied her petition to overturn the contempt finding, which was upheld on appeal in state court.

Chester County Senior Judge Thomas Gavin, who oversaw the fraud case after all Bucks County judges recused themselves, held Risoldi in contempt in June 2016 for using the subpoena process to skirt a court order barring her from contacting prosecution witnesses in her insurance fraud case.

Risoldi is scheduled to be sentenced next month for filing nearly $13 million in false insurance claims following a 2013 fire at her family’s former estate, Clairemont. A jury convicted her of dealing in unlawful proceeds, insurance fraud, theft by deception and criminal attempted theft by deception and conspiracy. The conviction was her second involving insurance fraud. In 1990 she pleaded guilty in federal court to mail fraud charges for defrauding her first husband’s union health insurance provider of $13,028.

The fire-damaged 10-acre property is scheduled to be auctioned to the highest bidder later this month; it was surrendered to the state as part of the restitution order that was part of a plea agreement with Carl Risoldi, 46, of Buckingham, Claire Risoldi’s son who was also charged in the insurance fraud case. Carl Risoldi pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of theft by deception and attempted theft by deception and was sentenced to four years of probation.