The former MIT professor and millionaire who made his fortune in creating and flipping tech corporations, holding technical patents and, later, land holdings will serve two years to 2 years and a day in state jail for forging paperwork associated to his late son’s will.
John J. Donovan Sr., 80, of Hamilton, in 2016 submitted greater than two dozen cast paperwork to the South Essex Registry of Deeds in Salem in an try to achieve his late son John J. Donovan III’s properties, an effort that may have swindled his son’s widow and his personal grandchildren out of tens of millions. He was convicted in Salem Superior Court on May 3 and sentenced by Judge Salim Tabit on Monday.
“Mr. Donovan is 80 years old and undoubtedly contributed much to society, but for 20 years he has left a trail of tears everywhere he has been,” Tabit stated at sentencing, in accordance with the Salem News. “It is my sincere hope that trail ends today.”
After an almost four-week trial, Donovan was discovered responsible of 12 counts: seven counts of forgery, uttering, submitting of false paperwork with the Registry of Deeds, acquiring a signature by false pretense, false assertion below the penalty of perjury and tried larceny by false pretense.
The youthful Donovan died at 43 on April 25, 2015, after a battle with adrenal most cancers, in accordance with his obituary, forsaking a spouse and two youngsters. He was a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School, proprietor of the Manchester Athletic Club and a philanthropist. His passions included farming, instructing and flying.
This isn’t the tech guru’s first brush with the legislation. In 2007, Donovan Sr. was convicted for submitting a false police report that one other of his sons, James, had employed Russian-accented, balaclava-wearing hitmen — together with a “big guy,” in accordance with his declare — to kill him.
Police discovered him at round 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 16, 2005, shot within the facet and mendacity throughout the entrance of his white minivan within the parking zone of his enterprise, Cambridge Executive Enterprises on Vassar Street, his ft dangling out of the open driver-side door.
Prosecutors successfully proved the wound was self inflicted and the manhunt for the phony gunmen price taxpayers as much as $100,000 on the time, then-Attorney General Martha Coakley estimated, including that it had been “treated initially as the kind of case that would bring terror to a community.”
Prosecutors then prompt Donovan serve six months in jail and pay for the price of the investigation and trial, however, citing Donovan’s age and lack of a previous felony document, Middlesex Superior Court Judge Kenneth J. Fishman sentenced him as an alternative to 2 years of probation, a $625 effective and 200 hours of group service.
The Herald discovered that Donovan was allowed to serve out his “community service” on a nonprofit path system that features a part of his household owned land usually used for fancy North Shore fox hunts.
“The defendant’s actions in the instant case demonstrate that a solely probationary sentence does not serve as a deterrent to commit future behavior,” prosecutors wrote of their sentencing memo for the present case.
They added that their really helpful sentence “balances and recognizes the fact that the defendant has been convicted at 80 years old and that any incarcerated sentence is significant.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”